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To twist or keep separate

My prior system setup required 30 ft speaker cables but my new listening room allows me to get away with speaker cable runs of about 12 ft. My original cables were Kimber 4TC. Since I only now need 12 ft for the longest run, I cut the 30 ft lengths in half, terminated the ends,  and ran two identical length 15 ft lengths to the speakers (Triton 1r). Then I figured I'd terminate the extra lengths and double my run to the speakers so I now have 2 - 15 ft lengths of 4TC. I figure this essentially creates an 8TC cable which gives me more copper for the signal. Question is this; should I twist each pair of 4TC together simulating the Kimber construction or are the two 15 ft runs better kept apart to avoid any interaction?

J.Chip
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ivan_nosnibor's avatar
ivan_nosnibor
1,047 posts
 
If you’re running each 4TC as a separate positive or negative run, then it would be good I think to twist them as the noise-canceling effect of the weave will have been bypassed within each leg at that point, unless you twist them.
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jchiappinelli's avatar
jchiappinelli OP
117 posts
 
Elizabeth is correct in that I am not running 2 positive and 2 negative runs but rather just doubling up the normal connection with a second run. Guess I could give a listen both ways (twisted or run in parallel) and see if there's a difference. Cables are 30 years old and very well broken in but my new gear is still going thru break in. I'll give both methods a try after break in.

Elizabeth,
interesting idea you had about the rope however I can't imagine attempting to snake a 1/2" rope thru 15 ft of cable 4 times. You must have a lot of patience or very short runs.

Thanks all for the feedback.
J.Chip
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kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Twisting positive and negative lowers inductance (important) and increases capacitance (not important). It also makes cable immune to electromagnetic and capacitive noise pickup (and radiation). Twisting two already twisted cables is different and doesn’t serve any purpose. In fact, cable manufacturers go to exotic schemes, like helical twist on hollow tube or flat cables (made of multiple twisted pairs) to split thicker wire into multiple isolated strands and then separating them, so that each strand is exposed only to magnetic field of neighboring strands. All thing comes from skin effect phenomena that becomes relevant in copper at 18awg @ 20kHz. That at least is the reason for such designs, but I doubt it is audible. I would just keep them apart. Adding second cable will reduce overall inductance, but I suspect that your intention might be different. You probably think of better damping of the membrane by reducing resistance in series. That won’t make any difference, since for the purpose of damping there are already many ohms of speaker’s own impedance in series (source impedance) and two wires in parallel would improve it only by a fraction of 1 percent. Lets us know how it sound with and without added cable.
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