Speaker cables for Martin Logan Montis


I am going to upgrade my speaker cables. I have ML Montis driven by Pass INT-150. Looking at the available literature (Roger Sanders, etc), it looks like low inductance at the expense of higher capacitance cables are the way to go. Checking the impedance curve of Montis from Stereophile review shows the capacitance of the panel is a whopping 10 uF. So even a few nF / foot should not present a problem right now I am looking at Mogami W3082 coax (120 nH / ft, 77 pF / ft) or Goertz MI 2 (6 nH / ft, 950 pF / ft). The Goertz has 20 times less inductance and 12 time more capacitance (expected based on the geometry). For an 8 ft run 7600 pF seems a lot of capacitance, but not I suppose with 10 uF panel connected to it. What do you all think? Anyone ever tried either of these?

jtucker
Oh, an inverter man!  Awesome.  I'm an analog design guy, board level, so discreet semi's, op amps, high power analog, amplifiers, & PCBA's are where I live.   I do have a second degree in embedded processors, although I haven't done much programming lately.  

Embedded processing power is so great these days, it is almost becoming scary.  A old friend of mine from high school did the editing for Terminator, her mom and my mom tried very hard to set us up together back in the day.   So that movie has special meaning now since processing power & 5G is getting us there surprisingly quickly.   I sure don't see machines taking over the world as in Matrix or Terminator movies, but the computing horsepower is arriving very soon and is already here in some cases.
Cool...what is your EE specialty?  Mine is dc/dc converters.  I've made several pairs of speaker cables in the past, nothing special though.  If I go the Mogami route, I will definitely build my own.  The alpha core seems it might be marginally less to buy pre-built.
Well, I'm sorry, I don't have a recommendation for you for a particular cable. 

What I do when searching for a cable is I look at the inductance and capacitance of the cable, assuming the manufacturer specifies it, and how it is made, the dielectric, construction, and then make a decision.    In other words, I look at the design and if I see some intelligence there that makes sense, I give it a try and trust my ears. 

That being said, being an EE guy, I usually design my own and experiment.   Really - the best sounding cable I have is the first one I made and the worst is the one I spent some decent money on.  
Spatialking, I don't disagree with any of that.  Most certainly you would want the cable capacitance much less than the panel capacitance.  So do you have any particular recommendation fro cables for ESL?  for mine LF is not an issue as they have powered bass and the impedance is high below the xover.  Thanks.
That is not exactly correct.   The formula is XL = 6.28 x F x L, so  you can see that the impedance of an inductor drops with frequency.   So they become a dead short at low frequencies.   So the frequency where the inductor has an impact is F = (6.28 x L)/XL  Consequently, the last thing you want to do is stick an inductive speaker cable in series with another inductor.   That low impedance will cause a roll off to occur much sooner.   To lower the inductance of a cable, you raise the capacitance.

Likewise, it is a similar situation for electrostatic speakers, except here you want inductive speaker cables because at low frequencies, that cap load looks like an open circuit.   This renders the inductance harmless.  If you use capacitive cables with electrostatics, they start shunting current away from the speaker, so the speaker never sees those signals. 

Hope this helps - I tried to keep it simple and not use any calculus to explain it.
Spatialking...Thanks for the response.  The way I understand it, inductive impedance goes up with frequency, so high inductive cables may cause HF roll off.  Capacitive impedance decreases with frequency, so high capacitance cables my present dangerously low impedance to amplifiers at high (> audio frequency perhaps) frequency.  Since the measured capacitance of the ML is already 10 uF, I'm thinking a little more capacitance may not adversely affect my Pass amplifier.  Dynamic speakers, especially multi-way, will present a (maybe) much more complex impedance.  It seems most are dominated by resonant frequency of woofer.
I have not tried this so I can't speak from experience.   Remember, low inductance with a resulting high capacitance cable is what is needed for dynamic loudspeakers, since they are inductive and have low impedance at low frequencies.   In general, it is the opposite for electrostatics, high inductance cable with a  resulting low capacitance.   I just can't say that this general rule applies in your case.
In any event, you need to try it and see if you like it.