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Cable Options from Breaker to Receptacle

There seems to be a number of products suitable to run from the main panel to the receptacles. I currently use Romex 10 gauge copper, but wonder if a more pure copper would make a difference. The run is not that long, so silver may also be possible. Manufacturers include:

Neotech
Cardas
Oyaide
Acrolink
Belden

Looking at Neotech, they even make a 9 gauge copper 'speaker cable' with a very robust housing. Also, a braided silver raw power cable which is incredibly expensive, but possibly with huge implications on the sound. Of course, these would be very difficult to maneuver in some situations.

It is difficult to do head-to-head comparisons, so perhaps people can relate their experience or speak to the use of these raw cables in building power cords.

Thanks
rtn1

Showing 2 responses by almarg

almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
Stranded wire, especially a twisted lay, will pass high frequencies better, exactly what you don't want to do with 60hz AC
Jim, even though this comes from a fairly distinguished source, I'm not sure it tells the whole story. Assuming the power amp is not Class A, as you certainly know the amount of current drawn will fluctuate widely, and will generally be drawn in bursts within each 60Hz cycle. During the increments of time when the amount of current is rapidly changing, frequency components will be present that are much higher than 60Hz.

So higher inductance would seem to present a tradeoff between the noise filtering benefits it might provide, and degradation of power amplifier dynamics and transient response that it might cause (if the amp is not Class A).

Also, fwiw, "strand jumping" and its alleged effects strike me as speculative, and I would want to see (and have yet to see) something that establishes its significance in a QUANTITATIVE manner.

That said, I have no opinion on the question of solid vs. stranded.

Best regards,
-- Al
almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
My suspicion has been that the power cords and cables that utilize a multitude of separately insulated small gauge conductors have been inspired by Litz wire, which is a technique that has long been used in high frequency applications, transformer applications, and inductor applications, for reasons that are explained in the article.

I have seen lots of claims and "theories," to use Risch's word, alleging that similar principles to those that are behind Litz wire apply to audio power cords and speaker cables (with the novel addition of the "strand jumping" distortion theory). None of those claims that I am aware of, though, are backed up in a quantitative manner. Given that skin effect is utterly inapplicable at 60Hz, and at best very slightly applicable at 20kHz (and completely inapplicable even at 20kHz if the wires are thin), in the absence of plausible quantitative technical rationale skepticism would seem to be justified.

Which is not to deny that many of those cords and cables may provide excellent performance in many systems. However without a well established technical rationale and understanding, system dependencies figure to be unpredictable, and the correlation between price and performance figures to be loose.

IMHO.

Best regards,
-- Al
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