CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[virusc]

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What did shock me was listening to speaker wires, but I have a theory on that too. 25 or so years ago a dealer gave me several speaker cables to take home and audition. One of them was Kimber Kable and their typical braided stuff. When I tried this cable everything sounded just awful. Much to my surprise my girlfriend at the time who cared nothing for audio came in and asked what was wrong with the stereo.

I suspect that even though the KK was make up of loads of small wires the total AWG was low. I've found that speaker cables sound different to me if the gauge is below 12 AWG. After that, even Romex sounds the same. Ever since then I've always run 12 AWG even when bi-amping.
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I was told by a engineer that those type of Kimber cables have high level of capacitance compared to more standard wire and can cause a audible issue with some amps. This was 20 years ago but I remember something about some low watt tube amps not liking some type of speaker cable too. I just won a large lot of MIT speaker cables from the early 2000's and will be testing them but so far they look like snake oil too. I always liked the big money Monster M2.4's and Cardas and Transparent cables myself.

[CIR Engineering]

[Curt Palme]

[Curt Palme]

[CIR Engineering]