2. cables
  3. 151843-25877

Speaker Cable Experiment Opinion

I'm probably going to turn a number of you off with this experiment but, hey, not much harm in this! I have a pair of the DIY White Lightning Moonshine speaker cables made from Woods Yard Master extension cord. It got popular a number of years ago and you can read about it at 6Moons here: https://6moons.com/audioreviews/whitelightning/moonshine.html I jumped onboard with these a number of years ago and use them to this day. I love them, they did wonders for my system. Now, I plan to experiment and want to try doubling them up to see if I can hear an improvement. My question is, I have a few options on how I can wire these up and not sure which way sounds like the best course of action. You'll notice that the White Lightning Moonshine cables have three conductors - white, black and green. The recipe calls for the white and green wires to be wired together to the positive side at the amp and speaker and the black is wired as the negative at the amp and speaker. It's odd that the positive conductor is twice the AWG as the negative but, hey, it works and they sound great. See the constructed cables at the link above to help visualize this. So, I have more of this Yard Master cord and here are my wiring options if I double up the cable:

1. Keep the same wiring scheme as it is now but add in another run by connecting the white and green of the new cord to white and green of the original cord to the positive side at the speaker and amp and then the black wire of the new cord to the other black wire from the original cord at the speaker and amp. So, the positive side would have four 16 AWG conductors and the negative side would have two 16 AWG conductors.

2. Try to follow me here. Wire up the green and white wires in cord #1 to the single black wire of cord #2 to form the positive side. Then, vice versa, wire the green and white wires of cord #2 with the single black wire from cord #1. This way I end up with the same AWG for both positive and negative which would be three 16 AWG wires. Essentially each positive and negative lead will share one wire inside the opposite cord.

3. The simplest option of all and am guessing this would be the dumbest. Use one extension cord with the green, white and black wires all twisted together to form the positive side and then of course another cord with the three wires twisted up for the negative side.

With any of those scenarios I wonder about whether I should twist the double run of cord or not regardless of which option, or just run them parallel side by side, maybe even zip tie them together?

Any insight would be appreciated, thanks!


128x128figuy

Showing 2 responses by mitch2

mitch2
3,697 posts
 
My "off the cuff" thoughts would be that your option 2 may reduce inductance and thus be a good way to go for speaker cables, and particularly for MF/HF drivers.  You would want to keep both cables in close proximity and probably twisted together would be best.

Additionally, if you bi-wire, what works best for the MF/HF drivers may not necessarily be required for the LF drivers.  In the case of LF, it may be sufficient to simply run two separate cables, connecting white, black, and green all together for each of the two polarities (i.e., pos and neg).  This would decrease the resistance to the LF drivers, which is typically a good thing.  It would also open another option that would be to connect the MF/HF drivers using your existing cables and configuration (since it seems to work for you), and then connect the LF drivers using one full (three strand) cable to each polarity.

As the others have already pointed out....experiment!
mitch2
3,697 posts
 
@twoleftears 
Where did that guy go who wanted us all to use 0 awg gauge battery cable for speakers?
Wow, thanks for reminding me of that thread - talk about fun!  I regret not trying out a pair and I seriously considered it but never got around to it.  Oh well, the day is young.  The poster was b4icu and below is last post (as you can see, a man of his word) and a link to the thread below the post.
Ok guys. This is going to end now and here. If your boss, of the cable industry you may represent wish to have a conversation, I'm here. For you: I'm no more available.
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/no-one-actually-knows-how-to-lculate-what-speaker-cable-they-need
More to discover