Is it safe to run cheap wires?

Hello Craig. I apologize in advance to what I know is going to be a long reply. To answer your question correctly there a lot of varibles to consider. My last pair of speakers were B&W 630's and my current pair are Sonus Faber Extremas. I have a Marantz multi disk (500 retail) and a Classe CDT 1 and Dac 1 (6500 retail). When I would a/b the cd players through the B&W's there was no difference in sound quality. Not they didnt sound great but they maxed out pretty quickly. This applied to all upgrades and never went beyond a certain point.
The Extrema's are incredibly sensitive, power hungry, have no ceiling, and are only limited by the level of equipment. No matter how small of an upgrade I do to my system I notice a huge difference.
Hooking up the second amp articulated the characteristics of the first amp. Classe is very fast and punchy yet smooth. They create an incredibly open and detailed sound stage with top notch imaging. The second amp reinforced these details especially the transparentcy.
I want to be honest and admit that I never compared these two to one amp that cost as much as the two combined. I started off with one and liked it so much that I just added a second one.
I love MIT wires and I was going to audtion two sets. A "normal set" and their push pull cables. The push pull use a biwired interconnect with one side wired out of phase and one wire connects into both sides of a two channel amp. (Im guessing there wired out of phase) The speaker cables are put on both positives of a two channel amp.(again I think thats how they hook up) It uses one two channel amplifier to run one speaker. Each amp controls a direction of the speaker. In or out so the amp doesnt have to change directions. I am intrigued by this idea and think it will create unsurpassed accuracy and you wouldnt need to have your amps bridged yet using both amps to their full potential. I havent auditioned them yet so I cant comment on their sound.
There is one unexpected draw back to running the two amps and Im not sure if its the sensitivity of the speaker or the amps. I think the amps need at least a day to heat up and preferably a month to make them really sing. That just means I leave my amps on all the time. The draw back is the heat they put out. Last summer I had to go out and buy an air conditioner for the room because the heat was unbearable. It was so bad that I replaced my thermastat before I releized it was the amps. I hope I answerd your questions and dont hesitate to ask about anything I missed.

Your monster cables will work fine unless they have been physically damaged. Sound quality might suffer compared to to other cables, but you should experience no damage to your equipment whatsoever. While the amplifier will respond to the difference in impedance that it sees when it tries to load into the cable / speaker interface compared to the originals that you were using, that would happen regardless of make, model, brand or cost of the cables being used. The only way that a cable could damage your amplifier is if it was a highly reactive design (Goertz, Polk, CAT 5, etc..) that was not dealt with accordingly (Zobel Network) or if the insulation was damaged in some way as to allow a short circuit to occur. Even at high power levels, the breakdown voltage of the dielectric insulator in most commercial cables is WAY above that of what most amplifiers are capable of putting out. While it is true that a speaker cable CAN limit power transfer, that would be due to its lack of CURRENT capacity and NOT its ability to pass voltage under any normal or reasonable circumstances. Unless you have a VERY long run or extremely skinny wires, i see no problems whatsoever. Hook them up and have at it. Sean >

Perfectimage; Thanks for answering the one amp versus two amp question. Steve McCormack suggested that I could do it the way you are, but I'm seriously considering sending them to SMC for mono-bloc conversion and matching as well as upgrading work. Happy Listening. Craig

Craig. If you decide to have them converted I would like to know how it works out for you. I have always questioned what you are loosing when an amp can be bridged by throwing a switch. I would think that a mono block and a bridged amp would be two different designs. I would think that having them converted like you are would be a much better option.