Braiding vs side by side?

Thanks for the responses.

Hifihvn, good point. So far the braided seems best but they are still pretty new.

Elizabeth, not sure how good my braiding was. I'll check for uniformity tomorrow and make it so if not.

Al, Cables are 8' in length, speakers are Magnepan 3.6's. I'm using 2 different amps, a pair of Pass XA100.5 monos and (hope you're sitting down) a pair of Cary 805 AE monos. The insulation is very thin teflon. I can try and measure it tomorrow, for now I'd guess 1/32" or less.

I've used this wire on my hi-eff/2 way 8 ohm speakers for years and really like it. It has just one wire per spade and have tried it that way on the Maggies but my friend had a little left over so I had him make up a set using 2 wires per spade wondering if the Maggies would like the extra current. These are so skinny to begin with, looks like it could be 16 ga, maybe even 18 ga. Don't know how much the silver factor fits in.

The Pass and Maggies are a nice match but the Cary has an output impedance of about 1.5 ohms giving it a damping factor of only 3 or 4 into the Maggies. There is a feedback control which if I switch in could reduce the impedance to around .5 but I'd rather not use it. Was wondering if the thicker wire would help the Cary out in the damping dept?

Thanks.

Here is a graph from Stereophiles measurements.
(Can't get the graph to appear but here are their comments)

The speaker's impedance (fig.1) approximates a resistive load of around 4 ohms over much of the audioband. However, there is a slight magnitude peak centered at 1.6kHz, due to the crossover between the ribbon and the midrange diaphragm. The minimum value is 3.3 ohms at 10kHz, which is not going to be problem for any good amplifier to drive, while the increasingly positive electrical phase angle at the top of the audioband is, I assume, due to the residual inductance of the ribbon driver. There is a small wrinkle in the trace between 50Hz and 60Hz, which is probably due to the tuning of the woofer diaphragm.



Fig.1 Magnepan MG3.6/R, electrical impedance (solid) and phase (dashed). (2 ohms/vertical div.)

This can be seen to the left of fig.2, as the big peak in the mid-bass. This is a nearfield measurement, which will exaggerate the behavior of the bass panel.

Al, thank you for doing all that research, I'm learning a lot.

Other than a limited SPL, do you see any reason a SET amp would be a mismatch for the 3.6's? My thoughts are/were: The Maggies are pretty resistive in nature (tubes like that) and, being a line source, will sound louder at the listening position than a point source of the same specs (so less power would be needed).

Thanks to everyone for their opinions and help.

Al, I did look up that thread you linked regarding Ralph's post. I found Duke's post interesting too. :-)

Liz, re-braided one that didn't look very uniform, now it's sit, forget and enjoy for awhile.

Tgrisham, Jedinite24: No problem. I like seeing people like Al get the praise they deserve. They don't get paid for their time, just do it out of the goodness in their heart.