Magnet Wire Question

Theoretical skin effect in copper at 20kHz starts at gauge 18.

Use drill - you'll never make even twisting by hand. Put at least one turn per inch. Twisted wire effectively reduces noise pickup for frequencies that have wavelength longer than pitch of the twist.

Damping factor doesn't matter. 4 ohm speaker's impedance is mostly resistive and is most likely around 3 ohms. This resistance is in series. Xover inductor in series with the woofer is about 0.1 ohm. Your effective DF is less than 1.3. As long as your amp and wires are 10x lower (0.3 ohm) it will change DF only by 10%. 0.128 ohm would be perfectly fine.

Thicker wire would reduce inductance (only a little) but you already do that by twisting. Twisting reduces inductance but also increases capacitance. It should not make a difference with speaker wire.

Make few versions with very tight, tight and loose twisting and listen. magnet wire is cheap. Good luck.

Al, I agree that skin effect might be unimportant. I only stated the boundary since cable companies (AQ FAQ) claim it is important and make all sorts of expensive arrangements like flat woven tape or helical twist of multiple wires on round hollow core (my Acoustic Zen Satori). It is far fetched concept but they know more than I do. There were sound differences between cables I used that I couldn't explain.

Tighter twist doesn't hurt and makes often handling of the wire easier. My router happens to be 5GHz. Such frequencies, once enter the box can either find LC circuit to couple to, or some nonlinear element to mix on - even while "searching" for ground return path. In addition to mixing there is also rectification phenomenon where many decades lower bandwidth amplifier converts high frequency signal into very small level DC (because of uneven positive and negative slew rates) that becomes "audible" when offending signal is amplitude or frequency modulated. We're talking microscopic levels - but why even to allow this garbage to enter amplifier's box. Wires inside of my Rowland model 102 box have very tight twist:

http://www.gzhifi.com/uploads/userup/0809/052315454K9.jpg

Why audiophiles select thick gauges? I'd like to know. Perhaps to reduce inductance?

Al, I agree that skin effect might be unimportant. I only stated the boundary
since cable companies (AQ FAQ) claim it is important and make all sorts of
expensive arrangements like flat woven tape or helical twist of multiple wires
on round hollow core (my Acoustic Zen Satori). It is far fetched concept but
they know more than I do. There were sound differences between cables I
used that I couldn't explain.

Tighter twist doesn't hurt and makes often handling of the wire easier. My
router happens to be 5GHz. Such frequencies, once enter the box can
either find LC circuit to couple to, or some nonlinear element to mix on -
even while "searching" for ground return path. In addition to
mixing there is also rectification phenomenon where many decades lower
bandwidth amplifier converts high frequency signal into very small level DC
(because of uneven positive and negative slew rates) that becomes
"audible" when offending signal is amplitude or frequency
modulated. We're talking microscopic levels - but why even to allow this
garbage to enter amplifier's box. Wires inside of my Rowland model 102
box have very tight twist.

Why audiophiles select thick gauges? I'd like to know. Perhaps to reduce
inductance?

Ultra_fi, Can you explain how drill changes structure of the wire material (copper) and what "change of structure" is?