Given that I have a 7.1 amp but only 5.1 speakers, and that the front speakers support bi-wiring, the extra cost of a couple of meters of cable to bi-amp them using the otherwise unused channels on the amp seemed worthwhile.
I've not had them long enough to have bothered trying to tell the difference between single-wire/bi-wire/bi-amp though, and it wouldn't be a double blind test anyway.
Ahem!
unless they're still selling a batch they produced before, I suppose.
Sorry, it seems their webserver insists on the trailing slash
I'd be interested to see some accurate measurements on speakers when bi-wired or not. It would also be interesting to see (much more difficult) a comparison between speakers where the crossover can be split to allow either bi-wiring or bi-amping by removing a link, against one with the crossover optimised for 'normal' use.
Ok. I'll stick by that. Try measuring the resistance of a 1/4" jack against something like a binding post. Especially a jack which has been left in place for some time. Of course you will need specialist equipment to do this. Now the OP clearly is keen on maintaining a decent damping factor by using thick speaker cables - why would you spoil that with an inadequate connector?
Perhaps you'd tell me what musical instrument amplifier has a speaker system even vaguely approaching a decent Hi-Fi one? They don't. For obvious reasons.
It's a legacy connector which was first used on low powered poor quality guitar amps. The fact it is still used for these does not mean it is the best connector for the job.
I'll ask again. Have you ever seen an amp with any pretentions to being 'Hi-Fi' that uses them for speaker outputs? Have you ever wondered why if they are so good?
And have you ever worked with musos on a gig? If they get the sound they like from a particular combination they will want to stick with it regardless. Even where there is lots of hum and buzz, for example. Mostly down to the legacy of using unbalanced high impedance everything. The 1/4" jack fits perfectly into that.
Quite. Designed to carry perhaps 300 - 3000 Hz. At line level. Where the signal to noise was poor anyway.
Even with extremely expensive PO style jacks they were still a source of trouble as a connector when dealing with high quality signals. Compared to say an XLR.
Do they?, anyone know just how much?...
I can't see how you could do an all round wrap like say on an XLR?
I'm sorry, but I'll have to nip this "Damping Factor" nonsense in the bud. Back in the seventies, "Damping Factor" was a much vaunted 'figure of merit' for the latest solid state amps. I too was taken in by the assumption that a 400:1 'damping factor' on 8 ohm speaker loads implied an output impedance of a mere 20 milli ohms.
The 20 milli ohms bit was correct enough but, in practice with '8 ohm' speakers, the effective damping factor would prove at best to be more like 5:1 at the cone resonance frequency. What seemed to be overlooked in this calculation of 'damping factor' was the effective series resistance of an '8 ohm' speaker's coil resistance, typically
7.5 ohms or higher.A 400:1 damping factor was a fallacy based on an assumption that the essentially resistive 8 ohm impedance of a moving coil speaker could be damped.
About the only type of drive unit that might benefit from such damping would be a pressure drive unit attached to an acoustic impedance matching unit, i.e a horn where electrical to acoustic efficiency goes from a mere 1% or less up to a whopping 48% (96% for bi-horn loaded drivers often used in open air venues for PA service).
Any resonance damping effect through 'dynamic electro braking' would be the result of this 7.5 ohms coil resistance in series with the amp's output impedance (.02 ohms in the case of a 400:1 damping factor at 8 ohms) versus a resonance impedance of 35 or so ohms.
As far as damping factor effects go, you could use 100 metre lengths of the flimsiest of bell wire and make no discernable difference other than maybe a 3 db or so drop in level. IOW, we'd be observing far more serious changes before any changes of driver resonance damping could become significant enough to warrant any concern. As for the rest, it's not a debate I wish to become involved with.
Any connector is likely to only have point contact, maybe in several places. To have anything other than point contact requires soft materials and they wont wear well.
I'm no 'oxygen free solid silver' speaker wire type - but can assure you that introducing appreciable resistance to speaker wiring is easily heard.
Yes, it will introduce attenuation and change the frequency response due to badly designed crossover filters that rely on being driven from a very low impedance source.
Only from Dennis. ;-)
Any electric motor ever built works better from a decent low impedance supply. A speaker is no different.
An electric motor is a transducer designed to convert electrical energy into mechanical (rotary) energy. As such, the efficiencies range from 90% and up.
A voice coil in a magnetic field (driving a speaker cone) is likewise a transducer designed to convert an electrical signal into sound pressure energy. Unlike the electric motor, its efficiency in a typical HiFi speaker enclosure ranges from around the 0.1 to 1% mark[1].
The fact that the DC resistance is only ever so slightly less than its impedance is the major clue to this 'lack of efficiency' which arises because of the gross mechanical impedance mismatch between the cone and the air (this has been likened to trying to make sound waves by rapidly waving a hammer back and forth - most of the energy is used to overcome inertia).
Yes, a speaker is the same yet so different to an electric motor.
[1] The only exception to this low efficiency working of the classic VC driven speaker cone applies when a pressure transducer is efficiently impedance matched to the air via an impedance matching horn. Typical efficiences for single horn loaded transducers can approach close to the theoretical maximum of 50%, typically up to 48%.
Quite. And a low impedance source helps control that inertia.
So explain what is wrong with what I said.
Only insofar as unwanted resonance is concerned when that low impedance consists largely of the VC resistance of the drive unit itself.
Once you're driving the speaker in the band above the resonant frequency, it won't make much difference as to whether you use a constant voltage or a constant current source amplifier (leaving aside the undesirable effects of any passive cross over filtering).
Of course, it'll make a considerable difference when asking the speaker to provide useful output at and around its resonant frequency as requirements usually dictate with most HiFi speakers of a practical size for use in the domestic environment.
The convention has always been to use a constant voltage source output impedance amplifier (a zero ohms ideal) to drive speaker loads. The crossover filters are designed for this specific case so it would be folly to use constant current drive except maybe with bi or tri
-amped setups with no such troublesome filtering to complicate things.
If it weren't for some really excruciating crossover filter impedance excursions, you'd be hard pushed to distinguish between an amp with a
400:1 damping factor and one with a mere 40:1 damping factor, all else being equal.
I can second that - friend's shiny expensive pioneer stereo (20 years ago) came with somewhat thin speaker wire, and changing it to decent fat stuff produced an obvious difference. Not in the "overtones of strawberry with clearer nose separation" Russ-Andrews style, actually obvious.
(bi-wiring OTOH...)
Bit snipped...
I'd expect he would. Seems to me that the muso industry is very, no ultra conservative in its ways and outlook;!..
Thats I reckon what you'd term a "legacy" capable device;)...
Plus all the other advantages..
Yes it will work but I think if these days if you were starting from scratch then something that bit better would come about. I'd bet that in terms of contact resistance a phono plug has more contact area;!.
Could have been worse I suppose, it might have gone the way of the DIN speaker connector.
Now that was an abortion .. if ever there was one;(..
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