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PostPosted: February 13th, 2021, 3:53 pm 
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Joined: January 15th, 2015, 7:19 am
Posts: 1697
Location: Baltimore MD
About a month ago I was making some changes to my system including a change in speaker wires.
I had been using Dave Raden's thermostat wire for a while and liked it very much on my Maggies and Quads.
It proved to be way too bright on the Spatials, of course, it was the speaker's terribly distorted tweeter causing the problem.
I then switched to some Anti-Cables which worked on the Spatials but sounded very flat on anything else.
When I got the Volti Razz in the house I set them up first with Daves wire and they sounded great. Later on, since the Razz's were bi-wireable I hooked up a set of Anit-cable for the bass and I made up a set for the upper freq from some Litz wire which I have had for years. I got out my solder pot and went to work. I was making some other changes at the same time.
Somehow I ended up with the Razz mid's sounded distorted. I have this dark cloud of depression hanging around that I broke something. Not going into details of some of the mods I did here but I was going a bit crazy and feeling really bad that I ruined some great speakers. I undid all the mods and the distortion was still there. Racking my feeble brain I finally realized the one thing I did not undo was the new speaker wires.
So today I put in jumpers and used just one run to the speakers and the distortion is gone!
AND....
it does not matter which wire I use there is no distortion!
The Anti-Cable is fine but lacking in air. Daves wires are great with the Razz, but the Litz is the winner.


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PostPosted: February 13th, 2021, 4:35 pm 
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The Litz wire is Dave's wire on steroids. The thermostat wire has 8 individually insulated solid 18 ga conductors. The Litz wire has many more and they're small enough that the skin effect is likely the entire radius of each conductor. I'm not sure I said that correctly, but hopefully you get what I mean.

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PostPosted: February 13th, 2021, 7:52 pm 
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Joined: January 15th, 2015, 7:19 am
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Location: Baltimore MD
Yes I know how Litz is supposed to work.
I wish I had more of this stuff. It is cotton covered, about 1/4 in diameter with what looks like more than 100 conductors, maybe more.
What I can not understand where the mid range distortion came from


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PostPosted: February 14th, 2021, 12:31 am 
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If there is any oxidation like copper sulfate on the copper wire I have had problems in the past with distortion as did a friend. He used Monster cable with lots of strands. Started hearing problems with his B&W 801 Matrix Series II speakers. Turns out his cables had copper sulfate corrosion and his ADCOM 565 amps feedback networks did not like it. Changed to new clean cables and problem solved.


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PostPosted: February 14th, 2021, 8:28 am 
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Joined: January 15th, 2015, 7:19 am
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Location: Baltimore MD
Thanks Hal
Oxidation is not the case here.
The distortion disappeared when I took apart the bi-wire. There was no distortion when using either of the wires.
It was the combination of the two wires that caused the distortion


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