Speaker Cables

thanks again @cakyol @pesky_wabbit @decooney @twoleftears and others for your advice and good points

yes i did check - and the spendor crossovers used high quality box poly capacitors known to stay stable over the years - am glad to stay away from cap replacement given their tricky measured vs listed values, esr’s etc etc - spendor evidently went to great mains to match and select caps way back to their manufacture of the bc1 and successors

tinned ends or solder cups points noted 👍👍

I have been auditioning Kimber Kable’s Bifocals and they sound great - still questioning the dollar value but clearly sound better than other speaker cables in my system. 
Mixed feelings because I was happy using cheaper cables. 

OP, the advice to use 8AWG cable for hook-up wire is simply ridiculous!
I like AWG 21 to 24 solid core pure copper OCC wire for the tweeter with no crimped on terminals anywhere. Solder all connections. If using solid core then provide vibration relief by using cable ties or some hot-melt glue to anchor the wire close to it's termination.

https://www.vhaudio.com/wire.html#vh18hookup : Chris supplies this wire with AirLok insulation which has a very low dielectric constant, even lower than Teflon. I use it inside amps too.

For mids and bass use AWG 14 to 18 OCC copper, avoiding PVC insulation. There are many outlets for good cable.

The advice to contact Audio Envy could work, they are garnering some good reviews. I have not used any of their stuff so have no comment.

With regards to changing capacitors: I do this all the time with great results.
I am sure pesky_wabbit was well-intentioned when he mentioned ESR. This is insignificant in a crossover and can be ignored. In the formula for capacitive reactance there is no 'R" value in the equation.   It is:   Xc =1 divided by (2xPixFxC) If you consider that when caps are chosen for XO duties the closest standard value to the theoretical value is used, then there is the individual driver's response, the overall response and the room's response,you will realise that ESR is a non-issue   : )

Perhaps when rewiring you consider replacing just the cap/s in the tweeter circuit and while you are at if you find any white sand-cast resistors replace them with Mills or similar. Expect a noticeable improvement.

Reflecting back on the Advent of High End Cables, one of the first designers to try and address real issues with signal transmission was Bruce Brisson. His cables and the spin off company founded by their distributors, the Sumners and Smith (Transparent) still stand out from the rest by delivering actual solutions for better audio reproduction and signal transmission more so than all the other “Cable Only” solutions. Wire mostly is wire...the technologies developed by the original two High End Cable Companies actually make a discernible improvement in the home audio listening experience.

This is insignificant in a crossover and can be ignored.

interesting post on Audiokarma 12 years ago:

Last night, inspired by this thread, I ran a bunch of capacitor curves. I tested six different types from my parts bin, ranging from the cheesiest old lytics to fancy film, and including garden variety audio NPE. All the caps were 4.7uF, within a couple of percent. I hooked each one in series, directly to a well-known 1" dome tweeter, then swept the voltage plot across the speaker terminals.

At 2 or 3 KHz, there was about a 1.5dB total spread between the units, increasing to almost 5dB at 20KHz. Interestingly, (or coincidentally?), the curves clustered into two fairly distinct groups. Also, interestingly, the two data clusters each contained both lytics and films. I will post curves and details when I have time, and will run impedance, ESR and DF curves on all the caps.

This was intended to be a quick, but very demanding test: the tweeter is 4 Ohms, and no other components were used at all. (EG- no pad resistor.) Eventually, I will test a more typical circuit topology.

The lessons, re-learned:

- changing cap types is perilous, and, will probably change the frequency response.

- Modern NPE’s can hold their own with film caps; there is no readily obvious, consistent advantage to either type, though there are various differences.

ken kantor, Mar 23, 2009

And what I am describing has nothing to do with capacitive reactance. It is called series resistance for a reason.