On 13 Mar 2005 00:48:06 GMT, wrote:



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.


Sorry to but in here, but there is a certain quantity of ******** in the
above.

Multiple strands have no effect whatsoever if they are in electrical contact.
A 3/8" diameter welding cable is essentially identical in impedance to a solid
cable of identical cross section. The only way to get multiple strands to give
you an advantage with skin effect is to insulate them from each other and to
regularly transpose the conductors so that each one ends up with the same
impedance from end to end.


Mark Rand (BSc Hons. Electrical Engineering and Electronics)
RTFM