[TheChairGuy]

Well, I finally did a comparitive analysis of speaker cables...and found out a log of interesting things.

1.  Price has little to do with sound reproduction
2.  Personal subjectivity is the greatest variable of all
3.  All cables are improved with a temporary $1.00 tweek - a nice glass of Chianti, usually  

The combatants
1.  Alpha-Core Goertz MI-2 (4.5' pair with speaker pins - $141.00)

2.  'Bubba966' wire - 13ga magnet wire (bare 6' pairs - $10.00 with shipping)

3.  Lowe's/Cerro Wire THHN 6 ga ($0.27 foot - 5' pairs with Parts Express compression speaker pins = $9.59)

4.  Mohawk Cat6 Plenum 9 (5' pairs, bare wire - FREE).  Sent along with a couple ZSLeeves puchases from Mark Hampton's ZCable a year ago or so.

The System
Receiver: JVC RX-F10

Source: $4800.00 worth of Empirical Audio modded Sony 7700 transport and MSB Gold Link III with Power Base (192K outputs only) and Revalation Audio Labs cables for 'power cord' and digi cable.

Speakers: Magnepan MMG's with Mye stands

Conditioning: BPT 2.0 with many upgrades

Other: ZSLeeves throughout, Alpha Core TQ2 interconnect, sand filled Target rack, convoluted foam pads (several), LAT AC-2 powr cable.

Room: 12 x 15' with 8-12' ceilings

My 'listening' room is also my office.  When not travelling I am in there 8-10 hours a day.  Every nuance and change in my system is immediately noticed.


Music (primarily)
Mali - Putamayo World Music
Norah Jones - Come Away With Me
Beck - Guero
The Red Violin - Original Soundtrack


The pecking order of combatants

#1 Alpha-Core MI-2 - The only speaker cable I've ever tried that has decidedly sounded like an upgrade to all others.  Excellent treble extension, extreme clarity and wonderful retrieval of low level detail.  Great stuff - really enhanced the great damping character and control the little JVC has over the long Maggie panels (a must).  Break-in need nly about 2 hours.The walls really dissapared using this wire...perhaps it does provide a lower distortion pathway as they claim?

#2 Bubba966 wire - Break-in needed about 4 hours.  Certainly looks dang weird back there, but performs capably.  HUGE soundstage - never heard anything quite like it - no walls large enough to contain it's BIG sound.  Powerful - wow.  But, lacking the treble and midrange finesee fo the Alpha Core. However, I found some voices and instruments that sounded a bit fake on the Alpha-Core were not on the BubbaMagnet wire...could be nothing more than the Alpha-Core being so extreme at pointing out deficiencies in the system, it may have found amplification or crossover problems - tho both the JVC and MMG's are impressive, manufacturers cut corners somewhere to make them.

This was 13ga wire, and I have read that mutiple runs of smaller gauge might have the finesse with all the power - I look forward to future test using multiple runs of 18ga - 22ga wire.  I love the bare ends - no extra brass/copper nasties in the way of the music.

#3  Mohawk CAT6 - An appealling choice I used for many months before comparing to others.  Super treble extension, good midrange but a bit wimpy in releasing bass energy.  May make an ideal bi-amp top end wire on the cheap.  It's 4 runs of 19 ga for and effective 13.5ga that barely fits in the speaker clips of the JVC.  CAT6 is nothing more than CAT5e with a plastic or nylon separator that reduces crosstalk (probably not a factor in such a short length of wire).  Break-in about 24 hours.  

For anyone interested, I found this better than a 6' length of bare wire Kimber 4TC I have around and used for quite some time.

#4 Lowe's/Cerro THHN 6 ga - I had used this with a passive subwoofer for quite some time and was super happy with it.  It clearly bested the 10ga. Sound King multistrand I was using prior to it.  As a full range cable it fell quite short of ideal, however.  I'm not sure what Bound for Sound's Martin DeWulf heard about a year ago when he wrote so glowingly about it - it's  downgrade in every way except bass.  I was never happy using it, it took about 24 hours to break-in..I couldn't wait to take these out of the line.  

So, that's the skinny.  You get what you pay for in this case.... the Alpha-Core's being the best of the bunch, but the BubbaWire and Cat6 had some appealling attributes. About the only wire I am now itching to try is some 8' length of Mapleshade Helix or Double Helix - which I understad is just braided (for RFI) smaller gauge magnet wire.  Other than that, I'm really pleaed with teh Alpha-Core wire in the system.

It has a 30 day return policy, but it only took 3 hours to know it was the best speaker wire I had ever had in this system. Others tried over time in differnt system confgs included, Monster Cable 11ga, Radio Shack 12ga, Sound King 10ga, Kimber 4TC, Lat International SS-1000D.

TCG

[TheChairGuy]

Forgot to add....minimal dialectric is at least as important as any particular wire geometry.  Storage of energy in those thick teflon and nylon jacketed wires seems to be quite deleterious to the end result.  Smearing, out of phase sounds are the result.

I'm not that surprised that the Alpha-Core and Magnet Wire had the thinnest dialectric and the THHN the thickest. With this knowledge, it may be insigtful to investigate air dialectric or some of the AudioQuest wire with the powered dialetric.

Further, re-wiring your speakers with thin dialectric wire may yield additional advantages.

My thoughts anyhow....

[Russell Dawkins]

have you heard or heard of anti cables?  
 http://www.anticables.com/order.html
These cost what I think good cables should - $80 stereo pair, terminated or $1.25/ft unterminated bulk. Phenominal buyer reviews.
Russell

[maxwalrath]

Bolder m-80's sounded better than anticables with my setup. Honestly, I hate comparing cables more than anything else, so I just did a 1 minute comparison.

I think the Bolders did a better job on bass....

[bubba966]

have you heard or heard of anti cables?  
 http://www.anticables.com/order.html
These cost what I think good cables should - $80 stereo pair, terminated or $1.25/ft unterminated bulk. Phenominal buyer reviews.
Russell

Yeah, that's 12awg magnet wire that's been terminated.

[maxwalrath]

Funny that it's $1.25 unterminated bulk. It gets sold for $10/foot.

*added*

sorry...the markup is only 4x the bulk price, since it gets sold at $10 per foot per pair. I didn't mean to imply that it gets sold at 8x the price.

[lonewolfny42]

Hey bubba,

How are you using that Bubba966 magnet wire ...where in your system ? Did you terminate it or just plain wire ends ? Thanks !! [/list:u]

[bubba966]

Funny that it's $1.25 unterminated bulk. It gets sold for $10/foot.

*added*

sorry...the markup is only 4x the bulk price, since it gets sold at $10 per foot per pair. I didn't mean to imply that it gets sold at 8x the price.

You need 4 feet of if to make a 1 foot stereo pair. So the terminated markup is only 2x.

Guess I shoulda sold the stuff I had for more $...

[bubba966]

Hey bubba,

How are you using that Bubba966 magnet wire ...where in your system ? Did you terminate it or just plain wire ends ? Thanks !! [/list:u]

I'm not using it in my system. Never bothered to try it as I've got a really nice set of custom M-80's from Bolder Cables. Didn't think it was worth the hassle of trying to get bare wire into the back of my receiver.

[maxwalrath]

forgot about that too Bubba......I guess anywhere less than 2x isn't that bad in the cable industry.

[TheChairGuy]

Wolfy Chris & Bubba,

Just scraping the ends of the 13ga. BubbaWire ( ) allows it to fit easily in the speaker clips of the JVC.

Bubba, you outta' try your own wire in place of the M80's.  You may not prefer them in the end, but you will be surprised at some aspects of it's performance.  Of all that I tried, that anti-cable, as it were, hinted at the largest amount of improvement offered if you get the right combo for it.  I think, as Mapleshade does with their Helix cables, a braided config of smaller gauge magnet wire might solve the lacking resolution and still have the 'wallop' and HUGE soundstage that they had in my system.

Yeah, Bubba sold me 24' total, which where made into 4 x 6' lengths for connecting right/left of two channels.  They look quite odd, but they work fairly well.  For some, it may even be a reference...for me, it was pipped by the much greater detail and extension of the Alpha-Core MI-2.

[TheChairGuy]

I do wonder if all magnet wire is the same...as the testimonials on Paul Speltz Anti-Cable site is pretty dramatic...those folks sure do love their 12ga Anti-Cables.

The 13ga. magnet wire I used was considerably 'fuzzier' and had less resolution than the Alpha-Cores...but had gobs of power an an enormous soundstage.  The Alpha-Core really melted the spekaers away, while the magnet wire had  distinctively 'there' presence.

 

[ohenry]

Don't forget the Neotech hook up wire that Larry Welsh turn us tripath users on to a while back, very nice for low power situations:

http://www.audiocominternational.com/store/product.asp?P_ID=82&strPageHistory=search&strKeywords=neotech,wire&numPageStartPosition=1&strSearchCriteria=any&PT_ID=all

[TheChairGuy]

ah, a good one - one day I'll have to try that, too.

[thayerg]

This intrigued me and I bought a pound of 14 ga. magnet wire yesterday for ten bucks. It's about eighty feet
I put it into my two-channel system by first installing the wires in the right channel only, figuring that the system would sound 'tilted' in some way if there were any great difference with the Kimber cable I'd been using.

There was a definite difference-a little more resolution, and it was slightly, almost imperceptibly louder towards the right. So then I installed the mag wire on the left channel.

Huge improvement. Biggest benefit would have to be a significant increase in resolution.

Bottom line--great stuff, well worth investigating.

I'm going to install it in my home theater system and I expect an even bigger improvement there.

[bubba966]

Wolfy Chris & Bubba,

Just scraping the ends of the 13ga. BubbaWire ( ) allows it to fit easily in the speaker clips of the JVC.

Bubba, you outta' try your own wire in place of the M80's.  You may not prefer them in the end, but you will be surprised at some aspects of it's performance.  Of all that I tried, that anti-cable, as it were, hinted at the largest amount of improvement offered if you get the right combo for it.  I think, as Mapleshade does with their Helix cables, a braided config o ...

Couldn't try that magnet wire I was selling even if I wanted to. I don't have any left.

And if I did have any left, I'd list it on AGon. Shoulda done that in the first place. But if I'd sold it over there, it would've sold for much more $ and none of the AC'ers would've gotten a good deal on what sounds like really good speaker wire...

[TheChairGuy]

Bubba, too bad you didn't try your own stuff    It's good, as theyerg found out.

Yerg, for resolution, the magnet wire was bested by the Alpha-Core MI-2 for me.  For gigantic soundstage and making my JVC receiver sound like it found anabolic steriods, the magnet wire was tops.

I know 14 vs. 13 may not seem like much, but from what I am reading the smaller gauge magnet wire overcomes some of the resolution/detail deficiency noted.  The 'killer app' may just be the Mapleshade Helix and Double Helix cables...which I understand is small gauge magnet wire spiral bound for RF rejection (like Kimber) and even available in 'Plus' verions (I assume cryo treated).  Costs are like $150 and $250 per 8' lengths, respectively, I think.

I pretty sure that'll be on my list next...unless I find a recipe for inexpensive silver wiring with thin, or air, dielectric, soon.

[JohnnyLightOn]

How have you all been running the mag wire?  By twisting the + and - together, just letting it hang where it wants, or deliberately separating it?

[hershey 22]

How have you all been running the mag wire?  By twisting the + and - together, just letting it hang where it wants, or deliberately separating it?

Good question Johnny!  I was just getting ready to ask the same thing of the Chairguy.  Also, is one grade or coating audibly better than the other?
This would probably clinch it for me as far as trying some of this once these questions are answered!!  

[TheChairGuy]

The separate wires just hang in the air...they look weird, but the result is good.  Mine were only 6' pairs (or quarts, actually   )

Bigger/fater is usually better in wire I've found, but I think a few strands of smaller gauge may be better than 12 or 13 ga. magnet wire. I don't know for sure, but I read some archived threads at AudioAsylum recently on the subject, and that seemed to be what several were saying.  The Mapleshade, as mentioned, is apparently several amaller gauge wire in a twist for RF rejection.

I found the top end and midrange to be coarser with the 13ga than with Alpha-Core MI-2...but I hear a lot of top end with my system (Steve at Empirical really knows how to flesh out the treble response - very full).   If your front end doesn't have that top end extension, or your ears don't (not poking fun, just that I know most men have very limited upper register hearing to begin with, and less as they age), you may find the 12,13, 14 ga to be perfect.  Either way, there is a lot to like with the 13ga. I have, anyhow.

Hey, experiment, let us know..it's cheap enough