[amblin]

I've been using bryston speaker cables and was extremely satisfied, but yesterday I found some left over NOS condition TKD 4*3AWG ,4G25 multi strand OFC copper power lines in a warehouse, asking $10/meter.

If I remembered correctly, in order to minimize signal loss, speaker cables were supposed to be low resistance and low impedance . Since the line resistance of a typical 1.5mm^2 cable is around 12ohms/km and a DC voltage drop of 29mV/A/m ， the data sheet of the 4G25 TKD shows only 0.72 ohms/km and 1.75mV/A/m respectively.

So maybe this though looking power line can become the ultimate speaker cable? Or am I missing something? Because my instincts is screaming I must have overlooked something...


A

[srb]

For an 8 foot speaker cable (16 foot total return length) the resistance of standard copper wire would be

11AWG  =  ~ .020 ohms

  3AWG  =  ~ .003 ohms

I doubt that a difference of ~ .017 ohms will make any appreciable listening difference, not to mention the flexibility and termination ease of 3AWG cable. 

Even with this special low-resistance TKD cable, if the resistance was zero (in fact at .72 ohms/km would be ~ .0002 ohms/ft), I still don't think .02 ohms total resistance is that meaningful of a difference.

What I'm trying to say is once you get to a fairly low resistance like 11AWG cable, you should probably be looking more at construction topology and its effect on inductance and capacitance.

Steve

[amblin]

For an 8 foot speaker cable (16 foot total return length) the resistance would be

11AWG  =  ~ .020 ohms

  3AWG  =  ~ .003 ohms

I doubt that a difference of ~ .017 ohms will make any appreciable listening difference, not to mention the flexibility and termination ease of 3AWG cable. 

Steve

Yeah.... My tools only accept wires up to 10 AWG...I have some large banana plugs that accepts wires up to 10mm diameter, but I'm still trying to chew through the rubber shield, this thing must be alligator proof...

But the cable looks so tough, the appearance alone adds around 10% audio quality 

[Speedskater]

One thing about old industrial wires and cables is that they often smell funny.

[amblin]

One thing about old industrial wires and cables is that they often smell funny.

Those I found seem brand new but old stock, still in factory wheel so just some dust here and there. Unlike some of those 'antique' cotton WE wires I've seen, man those must be a health hazard .

A funny looking lancet knive I found in my wife's tool box finally did the trick, it's amazingly thin and sharp, so I can simply cut a X in the cross section of the cable and then peel and cut the layers of rubber insulation away

I plan to use the 6 and 10mm rounded plated OFC terminals I found in an electrician shop instead of regular spade or banana. Because they seem to offer the least resistance, best contact area and can actually 'hang' on the speaker terminals so more secure considering the massive weight of the cable(almost 1.5kg a meter)

[amblin]

My god these cables were tough, 2hours and I only managed to finish one cable.

I don't even want to talk about how I got the snake skin onto it...