No one actually knows how to lculate what speaker cable they need

I just want to listen to my music. I like what Steve said. And I dont want to spend a ton of cash on cables. I do understand powering my equipment.  Mainly the amp. I have 4 double gang boxes on the back wall, each is a 20 amp circuit. So my amp is dedicated to a single circuit. I will eventually use a 12 awg cord to get the full power from the circuit.  I do understand one thing about electric,  the long you run the thicker the awg. 12/2 is in the wall and going any larger will not get me anymore power. Actually it would be dangerous to go a higher awg off the wall, don't want to heat up the lines in the wall. 20 amp from the breaker is all u will ever get and 12/2 is the feed. 12/2 does have distance limits. Unless u have 10/2 or 8/2 in your walls which no homes have except for dryers, ovens. Or you ran your own wiring. I know we are talking about speaker wire. But I thought I would throw in my electrical experience.  My 2 cents.

Mr. ppc67
This thread is about speaker cables. I would prefer not to open her a discusion on electrical wiring in the walls. Please fell free to open your own thread. Thanks.

b4icu,

You misunderstood my (fully hypothetical) question and cut it in pieces that lost the original meaning in the process.

"How thin is that last connecting piece on the 0 AWG wire allowed to be" I'd answered that already before! It should be as thick as possible, or as thick as the banana plug can get.

The question was, in fact,...

How thin is that last connecting piece on the 0 AWG wire allowed to be before it can be considered a fuse?

Not that I expect anyone to have an answer, or speaker cable to become a fuse, but there is a conceptual similarity in things I mentioned (fuses and thin wire attached to the thick wire).

"If you think of an 8-10 gauge wire as a fuse, you are wrong! The 0 AWG is the fuse in that system…"

You got me on this one. I could have sworn that every fuse I have ever encountered had a filament inside that was thinner than the wires it was placed between. I stand corrected although puzzled by this development in electrical engineering. I will blame the dogma they taught me in elementary school and my lack of keeping up with reality. I am too scared to find out why thicker wire would, in a fuse, burn sooner than the thin one. In my, admittedly mislead, mind I thought the thicker one conducts better and, sort of, more. Not to make it a wall wire thread, although it deserves comparison, but I cannot but think that we should have been putting thinner and thinner wires in the wall if we wanted carefree conduction.

Which might have been the point of all those manufacturers selling hair-thin speaker cables.

Whatever it is, I am puzzled.

b4icu,

"Those observations were both for the reporter and his spouse that confirmed his impression of grate sound improvement. It’s on this the thread, you can find it and read it."

I read it. In fact I think I read about 95 % of this thread and I hope it will not count against me on judgment day.

Still, my point was only that logic would tell me that thicker wire, as you suggest in all of your responses, conducts better and would measure/calculate better. On the other hand, some would say that measured differences at realistic cable lengths are so small that they could be considered negligible. The only way to determine what happens sonically would be to listen. Which is exactly what you reported in your response above. That would make calculations/measurements marginally useful for anyone interested in sound and not technical lamentations.

Now, why thinness of the wire is such a huge factor while it is not a factor when attached between the thick one and a banana plug is a little confusing. I do not expect that answer. Not from you, not from anyone. I feel that answer may have less to do with electrical properties and more with other characteristics of human nature.

Mr. glupson

1.       "How thin is that last connecting piece on the 0 AWG wire allowed to be before it can be considered a fuse?"

The 0 AWG is not for the current. It is for low resistance to match the relative low resistance of the amp. (DF). Some short and not so thin (I always repeated to use as thick as possible) wires at the end, won't change the cables resistance by much. Even a 12-14 AWG is no fuse. Most speaker cables on the market today are about that thick.

 

2.       My two cents on fuse in Audio:

I don't think that on the amp – speaker's path, a fuse is a good idea. I would rather prefer some sought of electronic protection in the amp. This whole thread is about minimizing the resistance of that loop, so a fuse will not do well to that.

That fuse you are talking about, what is its purpose? To protect the amp from short circuit or to protect the speakers from a faulty amp.?

Most damage to speakers is caused by using a low power amp. that might go over derived (volume) to get it play louder. When that happens the amp. might go into clipping (saturation). That’s a situation when it runs from positive to negative saturation, causing a very steep transient (dv/dt) that has a nature of high frequency and high energy. The speaker's cross over passes it to the tweeter, that in no way can handle it and its very thin wire coil, fries. A fuse in series with the speaker wire won't protect your tweeters from that.

Most of my systems since I'm in this hobby, never had a fuse on the audio path. On the mains supply: yes.