On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 05:36:26 UTC, wrote:

I understand your preference for McIntosh Amps, but I would agree with
Ted here. I think you should go for the line level to the shop and an
amp there.

An infrared stereo headphone unit might make a nice hum-free fixed
link between house & outbuilding. Can't find the one I bought years
ago, or I'd know the answer.

If you buy an amplifier that as not a McIntosh, I think you would have
better sound than runing 10 gauge wire from the house.

That would be 10ga stranded not solid. Good quality zipcord.

Incidently I just ran across an old article by Robert Pease on speaker
wire. He does not think much of the monster cable, but thought using
the flat cable with thirty twisted pairs paralleled might be justified.
His thought is that each pair has about a 75 ohm impedance. Thirty
pairs in parallel would have the impedance in the two ohm range.

For hi-fi speaker wire the 10ga zipcord offers dozens of strands per
conductor, thus it has much greater surface area per unit length than
solid conductor would. And THIS is what you want in order to conduct
the higher audio frequencies, as they travel along the 'skin' of a
conductor. More surface area=more skin. For longer lengths thicker
than 10ga will reduce power losses. Welding cable (very flexible-
many strands) would be excellent and certainly no more expensive than
those rip-off gold plated 'monster cables'. At audible frequencies
plating conductors with silver or gold has negligible effect. Only at
rf frequencies is this needed to reduce losses.

Twisted-pair are not fine enough to achieve what good quality zip cord
can in this application. And '75 ohm characteristic impedance' has
nothing to do with power transmission.
--
sp
````


Some of his columns are available on the Web. I will have a look to
see if this one is out there.

Dan

Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:




Thanks for the great input. Right now I'm still thinking 10 ga,
but
certainly nothing smaller. From the figures provided, it looks
like
things
get right out of control with smaller than 12 gage wire.

I still think you should go for line level to the shop and an amp
there.

I assume you have one of your amps to spare? That would surely make
it
easier! I might even overlook my zeal for owning Mc gear. :-)

I Economics drive me pretty hard, Ted. I do
appreciate and respect your comments, though. Just wish I understood
them
better.

Harold