[Sasha]

Does anyone know what the difference in inductivity and capacitance would be between the following two designs?
Start with the same copper mutli-strand wire, strands being twisted in a rope-lay configuration, entire wire enclosed in PVC insulation.
You want to tri-wire your speakers.
You construct one pair of speaker cables from this wire in a form of two parallel leads having their jackets conjoined by a strip of jacket material, essentially a ZIP cord.
You end up with 3 independent ZIP cords in your tri-wire application.
You construct another pair of speaker cables in a form of twisted configuration, where each lead, positive and negative, in total 6 leads (because of tri-wire) are intertwined in a braid, something like Kimber 8TC cable,
Which of the two constructions would exhibit larger inductance, which larger capacitance?

[Syrah]

I kind of second that question.  I too have a tri-wire application and I have wondered what the best configuration would be.  In particular, I'm curious as to whether it would be best to use different total gauge wiring for each driver, lighter gauge for the tweeters to reduce skin effect and heavier gauge for the woofers to lower resistance.  If so, what gauges are most appropriate for tweeter, mids, woofers?

[Sasha]

I am puzzled with your question on skin effect, how does lighter gauge reduce skin effect?
My understanding is that you cannot minimize it, simple laws of physics, AC tends to be most dense near the surface, more so with increased frequency, and for this reason you must go with larger gauge or multi-strand to minimize resistance?

BTW, I got some answers on another forum:
Braided cable will have less inductance and more capacitance.
In general, the closer the wires are to each other, the more capacitance there will be, and the less inductance. Vice versa if they are further apart of course.

[jeenie67]

Hi. See the post here in the lab, XLR cables. I added speaker cables to it w/ pics. I use 12 gauge solid copper wound at 45 degrees over a piece of tubing for the woofers. Loosely wound around that is Cat5e wire, all 8 solid copper strands dedicated to the tweeters.

[Syrah]

Thanks for your reply.  I'm using the Jon Risch formula cables now.  But I'd be surprised if the same cables are the ideal cables for the tiny tweeter as they are for the midrange drivers.  There must be an "ideal" construction for both, I would think??

If not skin effect, what is the reason for not going with a heavier (total) gauge or greater number of strands?  I thought heavier gauge reduced resistance.

[gerald porzio]

http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/skin-effect-relevance-in-speaker-cables/?searchterm=skin%20effect