[goldlizsts]

I am about to re-wire my speakers, but don't know what good wire to use.  Does anyone have experience with a good wire?  Someone had recommended Vampire CCC, but there is no 16-gauge, which I'm leaning toward.  Vampire seems to have only 22, then 14 or 12.  Someone also told me about Belden 1694A, which is a coaxial.  Also, there's a Kimber TCX 15-gauge wire I saw recently.

Does anyone have any recommendation?  Thanks.

[markC]

If your leaning towards Vampire, go with the 14ga.

[JLM]

Use the same inside and outside the box (that makes sense doesn't it?).

Don't use smaller than 18 gauge for woofers.

[mgalusha]

I rewired a friends GR Alphas with Cardas Litz (16ga) and didn't expect to hear any difference. I have to say the improvement was not subtle. The Cardas wire replaced the original 16ga silver plated copper.

[Bill Baker]

What type of wire you use is obviously up to you but my personal recommendation would be a decent 14 awg as a general rule (this is only my personal rule) but as long as these are your own personal speakers, why not use the same wire as you are using for speaker wire from your amp as mentioned.

[avahifi]

Why don't you guys rewind the voice coils of the drivers in your speaker systems with zongowire too?  There are hundreds of feet of hair size wires in the speaker voice coils all conspiring to give you just awful sound.  How can you just stop with a few few of connection wires inside the box and leave those hundreds of feet of crummy voice coil wires alone.  Remember the voice coil wires are in series with and part of the connection hookup in your speaker box.  The condition of hundreds of feet of "bad" wire in series  with a few feet of "good" wire seems to be a really sad situation.

Come on now, start tearing those tweeters apart and rewiring the voice coils with 10 gauge whoppowire and listen to the stunning results you might get. Too bad the tweeter voice coil now has a 6 foot diameter and will be a bit fussy to remount, I am sure you can do it if you try.

Frank Van Alstine

[JLM]

Frank,

I think you might be taking all this a bit too seriously.  

You make a good point, but aren't drivers "voiced" to the wire used in their coils?  


While you're at it I'd also replace the wiring used in the crossover too.  


Then there is all the nasty wiring in the amp, source, power cord, house, power lines, and the power plant itself.  

[Bill Baker]

Why don't you guys rewind the voice coils of the drivers in your speaker systems with zongowire too? There are hundreds of feet of hair size wires in the speaker voice coils ....................

 Yes Frank, I do agree with you on this but as we all know, "audiophiles" will spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on a pair of speaker cables feeding speakers that might have $3 worth of internal wiring. Even I don't understand this way of thinking. The same goes for internal wiring within electronics where someone spends thousands on interconnects when there is some cheap tinned wire inside their electronics.

 My thoughts on external (and even internal) wiring is that we are making a bad situation better, sometimes much better. Sometimes worse. Should we be spending thousands on interconnects and speaker cable? Not in my eyes.

 I have heard and even have in my showroom very expensive systems wired in a decent, standard 14 awg copper cable that sound just fine. To me, expensive over the top cabling is simply exotic tone tone controls.

 Everything audio is a compromise no matter which way you look at it.  If ever the perfect product is created, no matter what it is, I want to be on the list of dealers. Every component within the audio chain has it's limitations. Including the raw drivers that make up a speaker and the internal components that make up a finished product. Again, we can only make bad situations better. To a degree.

 Half the fun is the experimentation. I think everyone will agree there is no such thing as the perfect system and never will be. This is why I have always said, "Build your system for yourself, not the critics".

[kfr01]

DIY Cable includes this Canare 4S11, with the external jacket removed, in its speaker kits.   http://www.diycable.com/main/product_info.php?products_id=528

I have found it easy to work with and I highly doubt you'll see any sonic benefit going with anything more expensive.

In fact, I had a project where I used this:  http://www.crutchfield.com/S-goRErSeuSwQ/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?search=speaker+cable&i=211UC14

for testing crossover design (because I had a spool in the garage), then the more expensive Canare later.  

I couldn't tell a difference.  I continue to use the Canare just because it has some stiffness and body to it, which is kinda nice for feeding through enclosures and working with when soldering crossovers together.

[TheChairGuy]

Why don't you guys rewind the voice coils of the drivers in your speaker systems with zongowire too?  There are hundreds of feet of hair size wires in the speaker voice coils all conspiring to give you just awful sound.  How can you just stop with a few few of connection wires inside the box and leave those hundreds of feet of crummy voice coil wires alone.  Remember the voice coil wires are in series with and part of the connection hookup in your speaker box.  The condition of hundreds of feet of "bad" wir ...

Frank,

Please educate ALL of us what goes into a $1600.00 Biro speaker then...sold direct to consumer, without a middleman in a small, front ported box?

So, there's no expensive wire, nor voice coil and we already know your abundant thoughts on 'magic' caps and and out-of-the-ordinary binding posts.

All told - it seems a hideous amount of money for such a small speaker with ordinary parts.  Has the cost of extensive, hands-on electrical engineering at Audio by van Alstine risen to new heights of late as to greatly overpay for it's priveledge when buying this speaker?

Of course, you'd strongly urge everyone to hear the results of $1600.00 for themselves...as would every 'snake-oil' cable manufacturer in audio-dom.

Are there many glass houses in the Minneapolis area   ?

[avahifi]

First of all the price is $1595 for a pair of L/1 speakers, that is $797.50 a speaker then, not a $1600 speaker.

Next what goes in is about 5 hours of skilled labor to put the animals together.  I have only one assembler capabile of doing the job.  Then there is all the parts, the crossover board weighs about 10 pounds when finished for your info.  We also get to pay for the cabinets, the crossover circuit board, and the design time.  The product did not just magically appear, lots of engineering time was devoted to produce it.  Then consider packing time, shipping carton costs, and even the paperwork time to get an order out the door.  It all adds up.  I would like to make a couple bucks on the deal when the dust settles.

The Biro L/1 is as nice a small speaker as you are going to find, price not an object.  And of course there is that 30 day satisfaction guarantee.

The speaker is flat within + and - 1 dB from about 45 hz to past 20K hz and that is the way it sounds.  Its not glass and we don't live in a glass house.  The L/1 is the result of very careful engineering and measurements, not expensive snake oil.

Try them, you might even like them.

Frank Van Alstine

[TheChairGuy]

Try them, you might even like them.

Frank Van Alstine

Probably not too soon...I have a really nice pair of Linaeum towers purchased on ebay for the princely sum of $182.00.  They were actually kinda' pathetic until I laid down a good layer of Plast-i-Clay all over the insides and Peerless baskets.  I once again thank you for that wonderful tweek.

I also changed some of the wire out, too....that helped as well    

I'm probably more of a prospective AVA amp purchaser in the future...more than once I've considered them.

There are many good/excellent speakers to choose from at $1600...but precious few great amps from $1000-2000 new. That's just the market at work.

[Bill Baker]

I'm probably more of a prospective AVA amp purchaser in the future...more than once I've considered them

 Myself, I'm looking for a good DAC (yes, that's a not so subtle hint Frank). I have heard nothing but great things about the AVA gear. I think I have the speakers and amps covered. I have no problem buying and demostrating a DAC outside of my product line if it enhances what I already have.

[JohnR]

FWIW, some people like using magnet wire (ie the kind that goes into voice coils and inductors) for making cables. So my suggestion would be to try braiding some of that together for your internal speaker wiring. It's quite cheap (unless you get the fancy cryo'd stuff... )

[ScottMayo]

FWIW, some people like using magnet wire (ie the kind that goes into voice coils and inductors) for making cables. So my suggestion would be to try braiding some of that together for your internal speaker wiring. It's quite cheap (unless you get the fancy cryo'd stuff... )

It's nasty stuff. It's fairly easy to kink or otherwise mangle, and then it tends to form an inductor, that being more or less what it's designed for. Of course a trivial amount of inductance in series with a woofer isn't going to be a problem really, but it's still an annoying thought.

I don't hack speaker wiring. Do people who rewire speakers secure the wire so that it cannot vibrate? It occurs to me that a wire shaking in time with the last bass note is going to meddle with its own magnetic field in nasty ways, and then of course there's other magnetic fields in a speaker box to consider. Is this effect considered negligable, or are there rules for stablizing wire in speaker enclosures, that you ignore at your peril?

[JohnR]

It's nasty stuff. It's fairly easy to kink or otherwise mangle, and then it tends to form an inductor, that being more or less what it's designed for. Of course a trivial amount of inductance in series with a woofer isn't going to be a problem really, but it's still an annoying thought.

You are annoyed by the thought of a piece of wire being inductive? That's pretty funny

You know, it does come in different gauges. Try a larger one

[ScottMayo]

You are annoyed by the thought of a piece of wire being inductive? That's pretty funny

It's amazing what I find annoying. I don't see why physicists don't get on with zero-resistance wire, for one thing. And zero inductance, which they could probably solve at the same time if they were trying. And what's with this whole c in vaccuum being a "maximum speed limit"? I'm tired of getting my music late, because photons are too lazy to push the speed envelope. Don't even get me started on Pat Robertson or the current elected officials in my country, it's not a pretty subject.

But gold plated fuses and Machina Dynamica are still the top of my hit parade.

[stvnharr]

I use magnet wire, the Vampire CCC stuff, for everything.  Even the cryoed stuff isn't expensive, and the non cryoed wire is dirt cheap.  One has to be careful while braiding, and unkink the little kinks, but with practise it all comes fairly easy.  I hear no difference to the super expensive wires/cables I used to use, Cardas and Coincident.

Frank is right, it is all in series, signal wires/cables, crossover leads/internals, and voice coils.  Has anyone ever given it a thought when soldering that large 10 or 12 ga. wire to a woofer, only to see that relatively small wire on the woofer, "hm, is this big cable a bit of overkill here as it ends up in this little wire?"

[Steve]

I think goldlizsts is doing the right thing, especially if the internal wires have the cheap clip on connectors to connect to the drivers.

In working with my components years ago, I noticed that as I upgraded individual parts, the sound improved. For instance, upgrading the coupling capacitors helped the sound even though the resistors etc (of which there are many more) were still of poor quality. Then I started replacing the resistors, wires, etc. It seems every time I continued to upgrade a part, the sound continued to improve.

Of course, I needed to check each part for sonic quality to make sure I wasn't downgrading.

Good luck goldlizsts.