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

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.

b4icu,

I was not talking about real fuse or about placing one anywhere. It was a hypothetical question "how thin does the connecting wire have to be before it is called a fuse?". It may not be 12-14 AWG, but at what AWG would it be? Now, when I think about it, that is the question that could probably be answered with a  calculation. Not by me, but by some reasonably experienced electrical engineer.

"This whole thread is about minimizing the resistance of that loop, so a fuse will not do well to that."

and

"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."

I fully understand what you mean by both statements, but also do notice that you decide to downplay/ignore ("won't change by much") increased resistance on one part while considering the resistance of the other significant. At the same time, both of those resistances cannot be that huge and that is what your "opponents" claim.

Mr. glupson

How does it work in engineering:

Most times when values are minor regarding the other major circuit values, they tend to be ignored. Otherwise, it may complicate a lot the calculations. When it must be meticulously engineered (NASA, military, medical life saving etc’) no short cuts are allowed.

If you would like to dig into it, the path between the amplifier’s power supply back to ground, through the speaker cables and the speaker components, could be represented by a series of resistors (in the speaker there are also non resistive elements, as capacitors and coils). R=R1+R2+R3…+Rn. https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/resistor/res_3.html

That would also apply to the cable part as a standalone.

Each piece in that puzzler equals to some R:

· The banana plug contact area with the binding post’s,

· The banana plug itself,

· The short cable between that plug and the 0 AWG cable,

· The two connections: between the banana and the short cable,

· The short cable with the 0 AWG, to be applied in both ends (added twice).

On top, the R should be doubled, as we have two cables per channel: the red and the black.

For some you might need to do a measurement as it might be impossible to calculate.

For some reason, you are now digging into the most minor details of a 0 AWG cable, at a time before this thread, all were good so with a 12-14 AWG cables!