excess speaker wire

[drgolf975d]

I have read that it does not matter much if one speaker wire is longer or shorter than another; but is it "OK" to wrap excess speaker wire in a loop to make one side shorter than the other to hook up speakers or should I shorten the one side. I wanted to wrap in a loop so if I changed the speaker locations later I would not have to get new wire or have to splice together. The wire I am using is the New Monster wire which I believe is 12 gauge and I do not know if looping excess wire affects sound quality. I am a novice and new to the forum and appreciate your help.

[JohnMichael]

I loop speaker wire without any negative effect. I would not wrap the wire into a coil. I do keep my speaker wires the same length but that is from my early learning about audio in that you want the current to arrive at the two speakers at the same time. I do not know if this is true but I have always followed it.

[hermanv]

A tight loop will make an inductor (not a good one because both wires are looped). Inductance in a speaker cable is not a good thing, but like most things it's OK in moderation. Make the loop big, say a foot across and no more than 3 turns (all guesses).

Length is far more important due to uneven resistance than anything about signal arrival times. If one speaker were an inch closer to your ears than the other, and you wanted equal signal arrival time, that would require a difference in speaker cable length of 14 miles!

So difference in length becomes dependent on gauge, small gauge wires would have more impact on one speakers sound than a large gauge.

[jneutron]

A tight loop will make an inductor (not a good one because both wires are looped). Inductance in a speaker cable is not a good thing, but like most things it's OK in moderation. Make the loop big, say a foot across and no more than 3 turns (all guesses).

Looping the extra wire will not increase the inductance of the system. Since the two wires are carrying the same but opposite direction current, creating a solenoid with the wire pair will end up cancelling the field of both wires..net result will be no change in inductance.

I tested this with #24 zip, #12 zip, #16 zip, and #10 twisted pair. Under no circumstances, did winding the wires into a loop change the inductance of the wire pair.

I also looped these wires around a Stanley Bostitch stapler, a coffee mug, the magnet assembly of a selenium d205ti tweeter driver, and the magnet structure of an eminence Delta 12. Under all conditions, there was no measureable change in the inductance. All tests were done using both an HP4162A and an HP 4263B.

(around the magnetic materials did indeed suprise even me..)

Cheers, John

[GMichael]

Looping the extra wire will not increase the inductance of the system. Since the two wires are carrying the same but opposite direction current, creating a solenoid with the wire pair will end up cancelling the field of both wires..net result will be no change in inductance.

I tested this with #24 zip, #12 zip, #16 zip, and #10 twisted pair. Under no circumstances, did winding the wires into a loop change the inductance of the wire pair.

I also looped these wires around a Stanley Bostitch stapler, a coffee mug, the magnet assembly of a selenium d205ti tweeter driver, and the magnet structure of an eminence Delta 12. Under all conditions, there was no measureable change in the inductance. All tests were done using both an HP4162A and an HP 4263B.

(around the magnetic materials did indeed suprise even me..)

Cheers, John

Either you were very board, or you're one of those scientists I used to know back in Research.

[jneutron]

Either you were very board, or you're one of those scientists I used to know back in Research.

Both..

Actually, I was testing the fit of the Terman inductance equation against various wire geometries. Since I had it setup, and the question of proximity of speaker wire to magnetic entities and ceramic lifters had been bandied about I think over at AA, I decided to have fun. (I neglected to mention the CD jewel case and the Canon Powershot G-2, I figured nobody would wrap their wires around those..c'mon.....)

All the inductive measurements were within 4% of calculations for a 6 foot wireset in all four guages, at frequencies between 100 hz and 100 Khz, regardless of whether the wire was coiled on itself, or wrapped around anything at all. I attribute that error to the measurement of the actual wire spacing....I only used a dial vernier..had I really wanted to get silly, I could have used the laser thingy.

Cheers, John

[hermanv]

Looping the extra wire will not increase the inductance of the system. Since the two wires are carrying the same but opposite direction current, creating a solenoid with the wire pair will end up cancelling the field of both wires..net result will be no change in inductance.

I tested this with #24 zip, #12 zip, #16 zip, and #10 twisted pair. Under no circumstances, did winding the wires into a loop change the inductance of the wire pair.

I also looped these wires around a Stanley Bostitch stapler, a coffee mug, the magnet assembly of a selenium d205ti tweeter driver, and the magnet structure of an eminence Delta 12. Under all conditions, there was no measureable change in the inductance. All tests were done using both an HP4162A and an HP 4263B.

(around the magnetic materials did indeed suprise even me..)

Cheers, John

I agree, but I've always had some trouble expanding the thought to include how a coax impedance transformer balun could ever work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Balun.jpg

[jneutron]

I agree, but I've always had some trouble expanding the thought to include how a coax impedance transformer balun could ever work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Balun.jpg

Not being familiar with that thingy (that I can recall), I took the link back to the writeup.

Weird, they describe removing currents which travel on the outside of the braid...funny description, true of course, but definitely counter-intuitive.


The RF signal that is being carried by the coax has the current of the braid and the current of the center conductor. For the signal of interest, all the magnetic field of the signal is between the two conductors, purely within the dielectric. Outside of the shield, all magnetic field from the signal of interest is zero.

If there is any current travelling along the braid that is NOT also travelling back via the center conductor, it's magnetic field will not be cancelled, and the toroid will see it. In fact, the same would apply to any non signal currents in the center conductor that do not have an equal and opposite current in the shield.

So the device seems quite straightforward. A comparable device would be the toroid sensor in a GFI unit. That however, has two discrete wires, hot and neutral, which cancel out their equal but opposite currents in the GFI. It gets confusing when the wires are made coaxial to each other, and the description of operation is chock full of weird things.

Cheers, John