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Speaker Cable Malarkey (“Ghost” Cables)

I have an interesting phenomena on my hands. I recently ran 15’ runs of 12 gauge and 14 gauge to my mids and tweeters, respectively. Coming from much smaller gauge wire for my tweeters (and shorter runs) of 23 gauge wire, I noticed a significant change in the highs - they were more tamed and subdued. The mids were less dynamic too.

My solution was to run more cables in a shotgun configuration - another 12 gauge to the mids and a 20 gauge to the tweeters. After I hooked it all up I felt that the highs were harsh and brittle which may have been from a lack of cable break-in. In any case, I disconnected the 20 gauge at the speaker and left the other end attached to the amp because it is hard to access and I just wanted to see what “removing” the 20 gauge would sound like for the time being.

Here’s the thing, the treble was tamed a little bit but no where near just the 14 gauge alone as before. The 20 gauge wire isn’t connected to the speaker terminals but it’s still being energized by the amp and it is somehow altering the sound like it is connected.

What is going on here? 
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Showing 3 responses by teo_audio

teo_audio
932 posts
 
It’s called complex impedance interactions of parallel runs and... well.... interactions from the additional mass.

A bit of lenz law, a bit of this ...a bit of that...capacitance here, a bit of capacitance there...

Even the skin pigment in a cable can cause a change in the sound.

Long long story and the measurements can only be a small bit of the tale.

eg, the ’uncoupled at the tweeter’ run is still altering the load the amplifier sees, specifically in the transient domain...which cases the feedback circuit to modify the signal to compensate. In most amplifiers, that is.

Like some sort of unwanted extra long outrigger on an ocean going speedboat. the extra long outrigger is not responding to the waves near the boat, and thus improperly interferes with the boat’s correct operation.

the drivers and crossovers are a similar load, actually, magnitudes more complex than the wire but...... we listen via transients and that’s where the effect lies, so your entire hearing system is wired into hearing just that part of the signal ---so of course you hear it.

We don’t hear like an engineering measurement at all. The two systems (’standard measurement techniques’ and hearing) literally don’t jibe.
teo_audio
932 posts
 
Plot twist: Does this 20 gauge wire that is only connected at the amp need a break-in period?

Now that's a great question.
teo_audio
932 posts
 
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