Tara Cable speaker wire

[BillyB]

My Audio Dealer is recommending a Tara Cable solid core 4 conductor speaker cable for a Bi-wiring application I'm considering.I'm more used to seeing stranded wire for speaker wire applications and was just wondering if anyone has any strong opinions on this type of cable.Of course the cable isn't inexpensive but as my runs are fairly short I don't mind paying more if the quality is there.

[FLZapped]

My Audio Dealer is recommending a Tara Cable solid core 4 conductor speaker cable for a Bi-wiring application I'm considering.I'm more used to seeing stranded wire for speaker wire applications and was just wondering if anyone has any strong opinions on this type of cable.Of course the cable isn't inexpensive but as my runs are fairly short I don't mind paying more if the quality is there.

Just remember your audio dealer is in business to make money and may tend to offer what yields the most profit, rather than what might be best for you (but hey, that IS fre enterprize afterall!). Copper wire, despite what many claim, is pretty boring stuff. You really don't need anything expensive to get the job done well, especially over short distances. The real bug-a-boo is the insulation and whether or not the plasticizers have been adequately removed from it. This can lead to the wire corroding badly over time.

I've used low-voltage landscape wire with good success.

-Bruce

[JohnMichael]

My Audio Dealer is recommending a Tara Cable solid core 4 conductor speaker cable for a Bi-wiring application I'm considering.I'm more used to seeing stranded wire for speaker wire applications and was just wondering if anyone has any strong opinions on this type of cable.Of course the cable isn't inexpensive but as my runs are fairly short I don't mind paying more if the quality is there.

I have used solid core speaker cables for years and prefer them to stranded. I find in my system that there is better image focus with solid core. I am sensitive to a hazy blurry effect with stranded wire regardless of guage or quality. I also find the timing and pace of the music more accurate with solid core. Others may and will disagree about wires but I find solid core cables are much more accurate to my ears.

[Dreamcatcher]

It really depends on what kind of Amp and CD player you have.

I bought a pair of TaraLab PBW(Prism Bi-wire) speaker cable years ago, just because I was using Marantz CD-63 mkII player, the combination of the PBW and Marantz CD-63 mkII was amazing, I was pleased.

Years later, I upgrade my CD player from Marantz to Rega Jupiter, this PBW won't fit anymore, the sound was thinner.

PBW should be very possitive to you Quad and Rotel, I guess at least.

[hermanv]

My friend and I bought a number of brands of raw wire and then used these wires to make our own cables. We bought the wire from Michael Percy Audio, of the brands he carries the Cardas was reliably good in each price range.

The single biggest effect we found was that woofers just plain like large gauge wire, try for 12 guage or much larger if you can afford it. Next we found insulation did matter with Teflon seeming to be best and the vinyl family about worst. After those two issues metal purity mattered, ultra pure was better, we never tried plated wires, so many variables and a questionable reputation. Connectors also mattered with big heavy lugs doing best (we thought the rhodium plated were nice because fewer contact cleanings were anticipated). Cleaning the connections carefully helped a lot especially on brand new stuff, maybe due to left over oils from manufacturing.

On the whole silver seemed better than copper, but who can afford pure silver wires at 9 guage? The silver had the biggest effect at higher frequencies it was never verified (due to cost) if silver made any real difference on a woofer.

So in the end we tri wired; 9 gauge for the woofer, 11.5 gauge for the mid (the mid goes low in this speaker with a 175Hz crossover) and 16 gauge pure silver for the tweet. Both woofer and mid were pure copper.

All the cables were constructed to minimize inductance; i.e. the wires were laid side by side not twisted or braided, with an alternating hot/return pattern.

In general the higher the crossover frequencies the smaller the gauge needs to be for acceptable results.

One last point, at the cost of quality raw wire most speaker cables did not seem overpriced the better raw wires were not particularly cheap.

[musicoverall]

My friend and I bought a number of brands of raw wire and then used these wires to make our own cables. We bought the wire from Michael Percy Audio, of the brands he carries the Cardas was reliably good in each price range.

The single biggest effect we found was that woofers just plain like large gauge wire, try for 12 guage or much larger if you can afford it. Next we found insulation did matter with Teflon seeming to be best and the vinyl family about worst. After those two issues metal purity mattered, ultra pure was better, we never tried plated wires, so many variables and a questionable reputation. Connectors also mattered with big heavy lugs doing best (we thought the rhodium plated were nice because fewer contact cleanings were anticipated). Cleaning the connections carefully helped a lot especially on brand new stuff, maybe due to left over oils from manufacturing.

On the whole silver seemed better than copper, but who can afford pure silver wires at 9 guage? The silver had the biggest effect at higher frequencies it was never verified (due to cost) if silver made any real difference on a woofer.

So in the end we tri wired; 9 gauge for the woofer, 11.5 gauge for the mid (the mid goes low in this speaker with a 175Hz crossover) and 16 gauge pure silver for the tweet. Both woofer and mid were pure copper.

All the cables were constructed to minimize inductance; i.e. the wires were laid side by side not twisted or braided, with an alternating hot/return pattern.

In general the higher the crossover frequencies the smaller the gauge needs to be for acceptable results.

One last point, at the cost of quality raw wire most speaker cables did not seem overpriced the better raw wires were not particularly cheap.

It would be interesting how it stacks up to the higher cost spreads and to what you're currently using.

[hermanv]

Lstening impressions of our home brew cables:

This is tough. There are so many brands and price points I can only relate to a small selection of commercial cables used in the same system. None of these exceeded $900 in cost.

Maybe it's worth knowing my taste in sound. I like detail well enough, but hate that hardness or glare that often accompanies it. So I tend to lean a little towards warm or soft. I used to own C-J equipment, it was too far in that direction for me (I understand their newer stuff is lesss so).

So I want good impulse response, deep and detailed bass (it's surprising how much is hidden in that bass signal when inferior cables are used). Most of us are used to this I think so that it sounds normal. A good big gauge will bring out details you just didn't know where there.

For midrange, a very tough album is the ARC Choir. The massed voices easily drift into hard or harsh especially when they hit a massed peak. The hand claps also can easily become edgy. A good cable makes it far easier to hear the difference between the male and female handclaps, a good cable increases the number of distinct individual handcalps that can be distinguished. Our homemade cables did this very well.

For the tweeter a pure silver cable just seemed clearer, bigger gauges were better , but as I said, at some point the cost became prohibitive and we stopped going bigger. I am 58 years old and my treble hearing ain't what it used to be. Still the difference between the Homegrown 4 nines silver and a Cardas 5 nines silver used in our homemade cable was audible. The Cardas was noticably less strained. The Tweeter is the Scan Speak Revelator.

Larger gauges on the whole helped dynamics as well, in certain club recordings background voices actually come and go with various cables (more so with interconnects, but also with speaker cables). It's a cliche, but sound exploding out of a black background is more so with our home made cables that any commercial cables we tried.

Hope that helps, as I write I know there are endless details required to explain this well, details about equipment, crossovers components, drivers, room treatment, etc. etc. So I'll stop here maybe enough to give you a broad idea of the result.

[MikeyBC]

If your system is already a bit on the bright side i'd avoid the RSC line from Tara...the top end is very revealing, I am still looking to replace my Tara interconnects with Vampire CCC AI2 interconnects that I have listened to and compared them with, the Vampire has a slightly softer top end and a slightly tighter less bloaty bass but in my previous system i liked the Tara, When purchasing the MF stuff but i didnt listen with my cables ( a slight oversight on my part.)but i think the Vampire CCC AI2 will complement it nicely.