[andyr]

Hugh, I really must take issue with your negative comments about our "Kylie"!!  

She's a worldwide star ... a singing sensation ... a cute butt!!       Now, if we could get her to sing "Queen of the Night" ... that would be special!  

I could understand if it was Dannii you were talking about ... or is it Danniiii, I always forget?

Regards,

Andy

[stvnharr]

Hugh,
I've heard of the Flodders!


I have Chimera wire completely thru my system, good stuff, and very cost effective if bought in bulk.
The enameled wire is plenty safe inside the amp.  I use 8 strand for signal and earth wires.
IC's are 2+ and 2- for a 4 strand braid.
Speaker wires 8+ and 8-.   It's important to have enough wire to carry the bass information, and 8 or 9 is recommended.

BIWIRING is a waste of wire!!!!!!  
Use a single run to the speaker terminals.  Then, inside the speaker run individual short runs to the high pass and low pass.   The run to the high pass (tweeter) need only be half size as no need for bass capability.

[Greg Erskine]

Hugh,

Forget about the kids, the police and the neighbours.....I want to know if the AKSAs survived.

Greg

[AKSA]

Greg,

Yes, they certainly did!  But when I arrived, I found a 1 litre bottle of Coke and about twelve CDs sitting on top of the amp. covering all the ventilation slots.  It had been running full throttle for about three hours, and sounded absolutely dreadful.

Reason:  the amps had become VERY hot due to lack of air, and the bias generator had closed down the output stage, running perhaps 20mA of output bias.  This makes the amp sound very distorted, lots of crossover, but the kids never noticed......

Anyway, after three minutes cooling it was all back to normal, sounding pristine and wonderful again....

Another torture test survived!!  

Cheers,

Hugh

[andyr]

Just goes to show, Hugh, ya can't do without your children!  

YOU wouldn't have seriously thought of such a 'torture test' by yourself!  And my AKSAs survived MY daughter's party a few months ago ... which, as you know, resulted in me having to send both my Maggies back to the distributor for repair!  

Regards,

Andy

[Jens]

He, he, Hugh!

Those teenage daughters of yours seem quite a handful. But don't worry about it, this is normal behaviour!

And as Andy rightly commented - how else would you get your amp tested so thoroughly?

Cheers,

[AKSA]

Jens,

Perhaps it's a good thing you reminded me, before age dims my memory of those early years.....

I seem to remember lots of heavy drinking as a teenager, lots of smoking, lots of speeding, mostly on motorcycles, lots of facile attempts to get to know the girls, ah, so painful, yet still it brings a smile!     And to think my kids are now going through it all - one, the eldest, has the confrontational style - one of my traits - of a bullbar on a Mack truck.    It is fortunate she is brilliantly clever;  she won't make too many friends with a style like that.  But the younger, Alessandra, never confronts anyone!  She smiles sweetly, sneaks around behind them, and hits them over the head with a hammer!!  She'll get on...

Now, where were we?????  

Cheers,

Hugh

[Jens]

Jens,

Perhaps it's a good thing you reminded me, before age dims my memory of those early years.....

I seem to remember lots of heavy drinking as a teenager, lots of smoking, lots of speeding, mostly on motorcycles, lots of facile attempts to get to know the girls, ah, so painful, yet still it brings a smile!     And to think my kids are now going through it all - one, the eldest, has the confrontational style - one of my traits - of a bullbar on a Mack truck.    It is fortuna ...

Ah, so you do remember! You had me worried there for a while  

Cheers,

[andyr]

BIWIRING is a waste of wire!!!!!!  
Use a single run to the speaker terminals.  Then, inside the speaker run  ...

Well, as Hugh is asking us to bring the Aspen Forum back to the top of the posting stakes, I thought I'd take you up on your comment, Steven, that bi-wiring is a waste of wire!

Let's see if we can't stir up (another) hornets' nest here and get posts flying thick and fast!!  For instance, Malcolm - you with the wife of "golden eared" fame ... have you ever tried the comparison out on her?

Steven, why do you reckon bi-wiring is a waste of time??  All the theory I've read says it should be beneficial ... however, there is trap for young players with bi/tri-wiring and maybe your negative experience is because you fell into it?

There are 2 ways of putting together the 2 sections of a passive crossover which allows bi-wiring - either the HP and the LP sections have a completely separate '-ve' path (naturally, the '+ve' paths are separate!!) OR they share a common earth/return.

Some people report a 'woolliness' with bi-wiring which goes away when they revert to a single pair of wires.  My suggestion is ... this is because the crossovers in the speakers they are listening to have separate '-ve' paths.

Bi-wiring only sounds good if you have a common earth path in the crossover - so, even though the 2 pairs of speaker wires are connected back to 1 pair of binding posts at the amp, just try jumpering the two '-ve' binding posts together, at the crossover end.  This will restore the 'coherence' whilst also delivering the 'real' benefit of bi/tri-wiring ... stopping the base currents from muddying up the tweeter currents.

Regards,

Andy

[Malcolm Fear]

Hi andyr
I haven't tried bi wiring. I wouldn't know how to with my setup.
I use a full range Diatone speaker. No crossover. No tweeter.

[andyr]

Malcolm,  Sorry, I forgot about your Diatones!  Yes, they do make life simpler ... a few less things to worry about tweaking!  

Regards,

Andy

[stvnharr]

Here're my thoughts on why biwiring is a waste of wire.  

The output of the amplifier begins at the output spade, NOT at the speaker terminal.    There is just a single run of wire from the output spade of the amp to the + terminal on the speaker binding post.   There is just a single run of wire from the - terminal on the binding post to the star earth bolt.   Thus, ALL the amplified signal goes thru the single run on the + side, and there is but a single ground wire path to ground.

No matter how many wires are run from the speaker terminal post to the speaker, they all get combined inside the amp in the single wire on both the + and the ground side.
Separating the wires at the amplifier speaker terminal accomplishes no more than separating the wires at the speaker.   You just use more wire.
There is NO separate ground path, as there is only one ground path inside the amp.

If you wanted to have completely separate signal paths, this would require 2 sets of terminals on the back of the amp and separate wires.

Separate leads to each filter network inside the speaker is really just a matter of convenience.   Speakers with double binding posts are really just separating the leads outside the speaker is all.   The big benefit in this is making BIAMPING easy.  
BIAMPING, has benefits that are well documented.

[stvnharr]

Andy,
I should have read your full post before writing my post.
If I follow what you have written, then the HP and LP need to have as common a ground as possible, rather than as separate as possible.
I would agree with that.

I'm not sure what this "wooliness" is that you describe.   However, one does have to be careful in constructing a speaker crossover board and keeping the HP and LP as separate as possible, as well as being careful with orientation of the inductors.   Also, HP circuits can be sensitive to quality of the parts used, especially the capacitors.  

I really don't want to get into any long discussion of biwiring.   Other's can choose as they wish.   I just see NO benefit from it at all.

[ginger]

I've been one of the doubters about special cables until recent experiences and some thinking about the theory changed my mind.

Been doing some component optimisation on the 55N - trying out some of the "Audio Jewellry" as Hugh would say.

I started off by modifying one channel, blindly connecting the speaker cables so I did'nt know which speaker was being driven by which channel and after making my mind up which was better tracing back to see if it was the unmodified or the modified channel.

Like all great plans I come sadly unstuck - worthwhile mods were pretty obvious but the marginal stuff I suddenly found I was picking the same speaker every time - the speaker with the shorter cable run. Swapped the speakers over to check and still picked the one with the shorter cable run.

SO RULE #1 - Keep leads as short as possible REGARDLESS of what sort of cables you're using.

RULE#2 - If at all possible keep the lead the SAME length - the Audio Guru's say this is necessary to preserve coherence.

An aside on different test results using AKSA's vs Valve Amps.

ALL Amplifiers are degraded by RF noise, whether it gets in via Interconnects, via Speaker Cables or via Mains Power Connections or if its generated internally.

Many Valve Amps use feed back from the Output Transformer Secondary - that means from the speaker cable connection. Any RF pickup by the speaker cables is coupled back to where the feedback is applied, usually the front end of the amp. The shielded coax style speaker cables often sound better on Valve Amps because the shield prevents RF pickup in the first place.

Solid State Amps can suffer from this as well. If you're in a neighbourhood with lots of stray RF around you may find the shielded coax style speaker cables will suit you better.

P.S. This is why I recommended (in another thread) fitting 10nF Ceramic Caps from the ground sides of the amplifier input sockets to local chassis connection. It keeps any RF crap on the interconnect shields from entering the amplifier box and hence out of the electronics.

Something to think about anyway.

Cheers,
Ginger

[stvnharr]

Ginger,
Nice to have some confirmation on superiority of short cables.   Short, of course, is a variable term of undefined length, but everyone knows what "short" is.
Also, keeping wire lengths as close to the same makes sense for obvious, to me anyway, reasons.
Also, keeping wire awg the same once after the amplifier output seems to make a lot of sense as well.


One of the reasons I made my latest 55N in monobloc configuration was to keep cables short.  The IC's and speaker leads are both 1 meter.  The IC could probably be a half meter.   There certainly is no voltage loss in cables 1 meter and under, and shorter cables have less exposure to any stray RFI.   I've never been bothered by RFI though.
I've used all kinds of cables, both as IC's and speaker leads.  I've found that likely the most important aspect of a speaker lead is to have enough awg to fully transmit the bass information.   Of course, one should always use high quality wire, whether copper or silver or whatever.
I've tried biwiring configurations long ago.  I never found that they made any difference at all.   And now that I make amps, speakers, and cables, I see no benefit to running an extra wire.  
My previous 2 posts may have been as clear as mud, but with a 2 channel amplifier the signal and ground wires are single runs inside the amplifier.  Where one separates the single run of wire to each filter network, seems to be more a matter of convenience, rather than sound quality.
That's really what I was trying to say.