Cables make a difference..... (made you look anyway)

[Daniel Quinn]

Gman unless your the right age and your mother met my father , I doubt we are brothers

But as my father used to say all the bloody time 'its a wise child who knows his father'

[Gmanuk101]

Gman unless your the right age and your mother met my father , I doubt we are brothers

But as my father used to say all the bloody time 'its a wise child who knows his father'

I was speaking of course in the metaphorical sense, music brother.. that ok?

yes, my father once said... shut that bloody door and turn the music down.

[Wonfor14]

It is Fathers Day, I suppose.

Anyway, my experience is that cables mostly make a difference. Whether that difference is better, is up to the listener. I'm convinced that it often can be.

I played around a bit with the system at home, this weekend. I preferred a P50SA / S80 with TIS and LS7 to the same preamp with 300va monoblocks and SSP / LS5 cables.

YMMV - not a universal formula. I have efficient speakers in a smallish room 16ft x 12ft and listen at relatively low volumes.

[karatestu]

Here is the spec for TQ UB

Cable Specification

Resistance/Metre/Pair 18mΩ
Inductance/Metre/Pair (common mode) 25nH
Capacitance/Metre Between Pairs 2nF
Capacitance/Metre Between Conducting Pairs 4pF
Maximum Continues Current 11Amps
Breakdown Voltage/Metre Between Pairs >2500VAC
Breakdown Voltage/Metre Between Conducting Pairs >5000VAC
Maximum Working Temperature 150°C
Recommended Frequency Range (DC) 10Hz – 250KHz
Recommended Maximum Power Amp Load @ 8Ω 450WRMS
Recommended Maximum Power Amp Load @ 4Ω 950WRMS
Lose in Cable @ 11Amps/Metre 2.7Wmax
Cable Width max 13mm
Cable Thickness max 1.7mm

Conductors are Litz Inductively matched to length each pair.
At 60 Hz, the skin depth of a copper wire is about 8 mm. At 60 kHz, the skin depth of copper is about 0.254 mm. At 6 MHz, the skin depth is about 25.4 µm. Round conductors larger than a few skin depths don't conduct much current near their axis, so that material isn't used effectively. This causes a lose in detail and due to differences in Power/Frequency can cause phase changes producing error in depth of sound. Ordinary twisted conductor do not act like Litz as they conduct on there un-insulated surface to produce a solid conduct, only allowing the possibility to conduct more current as size increases, thus giving a larger diameter and solving the problem with brute force not science or thought. And large diameter wire increases the cost of raw materials and the wastes of money.
Please also note as the diameter increases and the gap stay relatively small the capacitance also is increasing reducing the bandwidth and having the opposite response to your need, not counting the fact of the wasted power to charge and discharge this capacitor as the amplifier swing its output voltage following the audio, this often cause another undesirable effect the amplifier become unstable and burnout in the worst case scenario.

Colin, somewhere (could be pfm) you mention that your bigger amps have feedback remote sensing meaning the speaker cables are in the feedback loop. Have I got that right ?

If so with a Class AB solid state amp is it just a case of not connecting the feedback between the output transistors as usual and extending it with a wire all the way to the speaker binding posts ( three wires in total to the speaker) ?

Or is there more to it than that ? (I suspect so ).

[karatestu]

I suspect also that including the speaker cable's inductance and the remote sense cable's capacitance in the feedback loop may affect the amplifier's stabilty ?

[Wonfor14]

I suspect also that including the speaker cable's inductance and the remote sense cable's capacitance in the feedback loop may affect the amplifier's stabilty ?

Well I cheat, firstly to make my life easy I use bridge amps in the M100 series. So effectively I have Balance out, breaking the Feedback completely would cause a few unstable and smoke filled moments.
But since each half of the amp is a PSU and all good PSU bench type have remote sense, so do these amps, in my case the sense and output terminal plus to plus or neg to neg have a internal 3w Resistor so leaving it open circuit will not cause smoke but a small increase in gain.
The M100 series on the PCB have two other feedback system that are voltage control,
1) Before the amp spills into the outside world i.e. just before the protection fuse and Zobel
2) One after the Zobel and on the speaker terminal
No 2 has got a link in it so we can put a sense out to the speaker.
The monster has also current feedback, and this is used so we can get a Power Factor Correction i.e. Phase control of current and voltage on those dreadful inductive/reactive speaker loads.

I hope this help my writing skill most time are crap but 4.30AM Sunday is harder he he

Have a great Day

[CN211276]

I played around a bit with the system at home, this weekend. I preferred a P50SA / S80 with TIS and LS7 to the same preamp with 300va monoblocks and SSP / LS5 cables.

I recall RD saying that the most effective NVA upgrades are cables. I also recall something being posted about TIS having the biggest beneficial impact when the source is digital. From my prespective upgrading to TSCS (LS7) and TIS from LS6 and SSP resulted in major SQ gains. My findings are in the NVA review thread posted in 2018 I think. Might also be copied to the NVA site. LS7 added a lot to vocals.

[Wonfor14]

I played around a bit with the system at home, this weekend. I preferred a P50SA / S80 with TIS and LS7 to the same preamp with 300va monoblocks and SSP / LS5 cables.

I recall RD saying that the most effective NVA upgrades are cables.

I find it varies. If you're using speakers with low impedance / complex crossover, then monoblocks (and bi-amping) will give you the biggest difference. In my experience.