Now what cable?

[stevo238]

I have a Classe' Cap-101 integrated paired up with some Revel M22 monitors. My speaker cable (should I say it) is Monster XP 14 gauge and is the last thing to get upgraded. I've looked at reasonably priced DH labs, Analysis plus, Signal, Audio art, Element, River, Blus jeans etc. and all look good for under $200.00. The Revel's are low sensitivity speakers too. Any thoughts on what I should go with. Thanks.

Steve

[Kevin P]

Check out the Cattails: http://www.catcables.com

After going to the site, click Speaker Products, then select Cattails. Very reasonably priced, high quality, and great customer service from the person who owns this site.

[Jeff]

Make sure you have some higher end interconnects. I purchased some Cat Cable Kingcats. The were much better than my Audioquest King cobras. Which is a high end copper I/C.

Once you have good I/C's, then move your way into better speaker wire. If you have enough wire to double bi-wire your speakers, go that route. It'll provide better lower end and the music will appear less "forced"

Jeff

[Briz vegas]

From my experience I would say make sure your ICs are the best possible - if quality varies your best should be at the start of the signal path - if you loose signal quality at the beginning of the chain the rest of the system just amplifies that lower quality signal - its like the GIGO thing in computers.

Yet to get into speaker cables myself - something to look forward to

[Alaric]

Jeff , I noticed you refer to better bottom-end from bi-wiring. I got the same results , but it seems my Paradigms have the mid and low driver on the bottom posts of the cabinets and the tweets all alone on the top. Do you have Paradigms by any chance?

[Jeff]

Alaric, the only Paradigm I have is a subwoofer. The speakers which I double biwire are B&W Nautilus 802's and a B&W HTM1 center speaker.
The bottom post on both speakers serve only the woofers.

I must admit I don't know of any other mfr which use the bottom posts
to work the midrange driver and the top post only powers the tweeter.
Interesting combination.


Jeff

[nikos]

Make sure you have some higher end interconnects. I purchased some Cat Cable Kingcats. The were much better than my Audioquest King cobras. Which is a high end copper I/C.

Once you have good I/C's, then move your way into better speaker wire. If you have enough wire to double bi-wire your speakers, go that route. It'll provide better lower end and the music will appear less "forced"

Jeff

Jeff you say DOUBLE bi-wire.... I understand bi-wire....but what do you mean by DOUBLE...?

[Jeff]

Nikos, have have one complete speaker cable running to the upper ranges and second speaker cable running to the woofers. I'm not spliting a single speaker cable in half and running 1/2 to the tweets/mids and the other 1/2 to the woofers (single bi-wire).

Jeff

[Kevin D]

Nikos, have have one complete speaker cable running to the upper ranges and second speaker cable running to the woofers. I'm not spliting a single speaker cable in half and running 1/2 to the tweets/mids and the other 1/2 to the woofers (single bi-wire).

Jeff

Ok, now I'm confused. A single speaker cable is 2 wires. You can't run one wire to the high and one wire to the low and expect it to work. One wire is positive, one wire is negative. Both negative posts have to be on one wire, both positive posts need to be on one wire. That's just running a speaker cable.

Bi-wiring is running IS running two speaker cables (4 wires total), what you call double bi-wiring. Double bi-wiring would actually infer more then 4 individual wires.

I've heard of tri-wiring, if the speaker has individual posts for low, mid and high.

Kevin D.

[Jeff]

Hi Kevin, let me elaborate. Most people have one pair of speaker wires to power two speakers. I have two pair of speaker wires to power two speakers. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here ya go.

Jeff

[Alaric]

Jeff , I understand. My "bi-wire" speaker cables are single wires at the amps , but split into 4 leads at the speaker. By "double-wiring" you mean running two completely seperate pairs of cable to each speaker , right?

[Jeff]

Alaric, that's correct! There's noticable better sound.