The Natural Philosopher wrote:
PC Paul wrote:

Chip wrote:

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:21:33 +0000 (UTC),it is alleged that NC
spake thusly in uk.d-i-y:
My suggestion which audiophiles would kill me for is much the same
as Ian Stirling's. 0.1" pitch ribbon cable would be ideal for this,
depending on the thickness of the underlay beneath the laminate you
may even be able to get away without routing the floor at all.



Thirded. Ribbon cables are very very flat, and easy to get in many
widths (or run several strips!).

Each conductor in typical 0.1" cable is capable of carrying 2A and
since the cores all have good heat dissipation this doesn't really
go down much with number of conductors, as a round cable would.

Just pick a size you can get cheaply and bundle together as many
conductors as you want for each side of the speaker connection.


Current carrying capacity is not the issue: It's resistance. You will
get a very woolly bass sound from ribbon cable of that dimension.
Lousdpeakers rely on a low presented impedance to damp out cone and
enclosure resonances at low frequencies. The amplifier manufacturers
go to extreme lengths to get this well below 50 millohms: ruining all
their good work with high resistance cable will not get the best out
of the kit.

OK so for a typical 28AWG strand of ribbon you have ~240ohms/km max
resistance. That's 2.4 ohms for a 10m length.

Now take a typical 20 strand ribbon split to 10 strands for each side of the
connection - 10 strands of 2.4ohms in parallel gives you a resistance of
0.24 ohms.

This is approx the same as 10m of 0.75mm2 round cable. Not that bad, really.
Not good, but adequate.

If you want audiophile quality then yes, you do need much bigger (and
shorter) cables, but for normal home music or surround speakers that's fine.