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Speaker cable vibration?

After trial and error, I discovered that a certain 'edginess' and lack of coherence I was hearing from my speakers was due in part to the physical vibration of the speaker cable and connectors. As music was playing, I felt the connectors where they connected to the binding posts, and they had significant vibration, in direct relation to what the drivers were doing. Also, to a lesser degree but in the same vein, the speaker cable itself was also vibrating.

I then tried damping the the cable and connectors with very DIY items from Home Depot -- pipe insulation and felt washers for sinks. The result was a much tighter, smoother more natural and direct sound.

I am in the middle just now of receiving different speakers after selling off the ones I was using. I have wondered if poor binding post insulation was the culprit, and will find out more definitively once I try the new speakers and see if vibrating binding posts are still an issue.

I bring this up, because:
1) The issue seems significant in its affect on the sound
2) I haven't read/heard much about this before (I would think any significant source of vibration would have been jumped on by the tweak companies by now)
3) Why haven't speaker cable companies addressed this
4) Curious to hear from others

The sound has been improved, but looks-wise, I've got speaker cable wrapped in pipe insulation. Not very WAF to say the least. I do know of one company -- Acoustic Revive -- that I think has some sort of insulation in their connectors. FYI my speaker cables are thick Synergistic Research with WBT 0645 banana connectors.
tholt

Showing 3 responses by jedinite24

jedinite24's avatar
jedinite24
1,503 posts
 
Thanks for starting this thread THolt and thanks Capt369 for contributing. I'm going to look into those binding post washers from Herbies. I have a pair of KEF Q300s and when I was playing music at normal levels the speaker binding posts were vibrating a bit when I touched them. I was checking to see if some tweaks I had put in place were secure and noticed the vibration. The speaker cables were secure as were the tweaks and the binding posts were screwed in tight but I felt a lot of vibration back there. I put a 5lb weight on top of each speaker but the music sounded really funny.

I don't remember if the other bookshelves I've had in the past had that much vibration/resonance in the back or in general.
jedinite24's avatar
jedinite24
1,503 posts
 
Well I found with my KEF Q300 bookshelf speakers that not only do the binding posts vibrate but the whole enclosure of the speakers vibrates when music is playing. Top, rear, sides... I know. I know. What did you think was going to happen?

I guess I'm used to the internal bracing and thicker cabinets of the bigger older KEF floor standers where you don't feel much vibration when you touch the speakers when music is playing.
jedinite24's avatar
jedinite24
1,503 posts
 
Hey THolt

I got another pair of bookshelf speakers that have binding posts that are recessed into the speaker rather than the ones the stick out and I still did feel some vibration from the posts. Those speakers were connected via spades rather than banana plugs. For my KEF Q300 speakers that I felt vibrations from the binding posts that stick out I went to a bare wire connection and I still felt vibrations.

Have you ever spoken to any diy speaker builders or pro speaker builders in general here about the vibrations from the binding posts? If so what did they say? Also I wonder if you tried a vintage speaker with push pin connections if you would feel any types of vibration back there? Maybe in your speakers if you could put some blu tack or a piece of dynamat on the interior to absorb the vibration it would help?

Now I did talk to one audiophile who had a big dollar system about speaker cable vibrations and he combatted it with pipe insulation that he wrapped around his cables. That and some cable elevators but I don't remember what brand.

I'm guessing membership is having some fun with you and are trying to tell you not to take this issue seriously. I mean if Harbeth has speakers where there are binding posts that vibrate I'm guessing it isn't much of an issue?

I'll report back when I check my floorstanders for binding post vibrations.
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