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Best 6 inch speaker cable suggestions needed.

Tried putting my SET monoblock amps close up to my speakers last night and the results are very encouraging.

I was originally running 5 feet of teflon covered 12 gauge solid ohno wire. Then I put the amps on stands up to my open baffle speakers and used 6 inches of the same wire I cut off of the original non terminated and in shotgun fashion. My very short listening tests revealed that compared to the same cable at longer lengths it allows the music to pour through the speakers even more which is quite an accomplishment as the long simple DIY cable already beat out many commercial cables in this regard. The longer version almost sounds attenuated against the 6 inch.

I don't know if my inexpensive solid 12 gauge is the best cable for a short run and don't mind opening the wallet if I can improve things even further. So from my limited reading on the forums I have come up with a few ideas and wonder how those here feel about these or any other suggestions commercially or DIY.

I should mention I also tried a piece of Van Den Hul D-352 and it produced the typical silver clarity but lean sounding and a touch too bright. I prefer something more full bodied for my open baffles. The site describes this wire as silver coated ofc so maybe I should not mix it up with pure silver silver strands and also should not dismiss silver coated wiring as I did try SR cables last year and I believe has some silver in it and it sounded very natural along with great bass,air and deep soundstage. This is the ideal sound I'm hoping to achieve.

So would some high end flexible jumpers, Goertz by the foot, copper foil,gold wiring, high end hook up wire or something else I have not thought of work better for me?
frankk
frankk OP
50 posts
 
I am leaning towards trying some of the various alloy wires as it should not cost too much to try short lengths. So I'm now currently trying to find the best source(s) for it.

The various things I will have to consider are:

-terminate ends or not (if it is to be partial gold alloy it might not have the same oxidization issues pure copper has).

-gauge and configuration (for such a short length I don't know if I need to twist them as it probably doesn't need it nor be effected by outside interference unless I want to change inductance and capacitance and for such a short length how much would a few twists have anyways)

-maybe just bypass the connectors on the amp as jrinkerptdnet suggests and wire it internally.

-run bare or have some sort of teflon piping or cotton around it (which if running just shotgun probably should not be necessary).

For those others that have been down this road, please chime in.
mingles
799 posts
 
Frankk, do you have any observations to report on your short speaker cables? I'm considering the same thing.
hifiharv
351 posts
 
Frankk, your findings are interesting to me since they contradict what Pierre at Mapleshade has been promoting for years... that 8 feet sounds better than shorter lengths under all circumstances. I'm using 4 feet and have often wondered if this was a mistake. I always thought the shorter the better and found Mapleshades theory hard to embrace. Not that I blindly would follow whatever Mapleshade sayes, just that I would assume they have spent alot more time and effort experimenting with this than I have the resources to do. I doubt if many others have tried a few inches of speaker wire. Anyone else out there want to chime in with their results from going to mere inches of the same wire they are used to in long lengths?
mingles
799 posts
 
There was a forum not too long ago where Ralph Karsten of Atma-Sphere described his positive experience using 3" cables connecting speakers to tube amps. He had a technical explanation for the reason behind the benefit, but I don't recall the details. You might want to contact him directly.
mingles
799 posts
 
Here's a link to the post I mentioned:

speaker cable lengths vs speaker impedance

It's definitely worth reading.
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