We who are about to die salute you

[Scottmoose]

Possibly. But until that inglorious day:

If anybody is on the lookout for some 'substantial' speaker wire, you may want to have a look over on av.com at the Havana FX Quad XL biwire. Current link: https://www.av.com/Cables/Fisual-Havana ... Cable/48RE

Twisted star quad geometry, PE insulation, floating mylar shield with a soft protective translucent black outer PVC jacket & high purity copper conductors wound around a PE core. Assuming the aforementioned star-quad wiring, size is effectively 7AWG - 8AWG. Current price is £1.99 per meter [not a typo].

It's advertised as a biwire; ignore that & wire as a star-quad by paralleling the blue + green wires, and the red + black wires, finish with an inch of heatshrink & terminate with your choice of connector. I've just bought 6m; it's a substantial 20mm external diameter that's meant to resemble a cigar. As far as usability is concerned, it's not the most flexible & it's certainly weighty but bending radius is reasonable enough, and for about £12+ postage for a 3m pair it has a spec. at least equal to many leads sold for 50x - 100x its price & better than a lot of them too given the heavy total gauge when set for single-wiring. I've just measured mine in the star-quad configuration at 0.00167ohms/meter (roughly equal to 7AWG) so voltage drop in most systems with a conventional low output impedance amplifer will be < the 0.1 'ideal'.

Judging by the price, they're selling off existing stock. For reference, the standard twin-lead Havana speaker wire is also available, but since they're charging the same, I'd avoid that one since effective conductor size is only about 14.3AWG compared to the [nominal] bi-wire version's effective 7AWG. Only exception to that would be if you're running a solid state amplifier that lacks a Thiele output network / equivalent thereof & relies on some inductance from the speaker lead to ensure its own stability, since in this geometry inductance is quite low despite the overall conductor size. It probably won't make any difference with a high output impedance amplifier, but since there's no harm in it, might as well go for the larger as there's no harm in it.

[Ali Tait]

Be rude not to at that price, got some to try. Thanks for the heads up Scott.

[Scottmoose]

My thoughts exactly.

I've actually been running the Havana RCA and USB leads for a few years -always liked the appearance, and they're a decent spec., especially for the price.

[vinylnvalves]

Ordered 10m. Have to see how it compares with the Supra Rondo i use. I needed longer lengths for the WAM show. Shame they don’t do 4mm x 4 - which I may need for the subs.

[Scottmoose]

As in the Rondo? I thought they did: http://www.jenving.com/datasheets/en/Sp ... eet-en.pdf

[vinylnvalves]

I meant it’s a shame they don’t do the Havana in 4mm x 4. Yes I know they do the Supra. Just don’t want to pay £16/m Whether good cables make any difference for subs working up to 100hz is the question….do I just get the zan damme ones.

[Scottmoose]

This biwire Havana is 4 x 4mm2. That's one of the reasons it's such a hefty lead. It's the standard Havana [roughly 2 x 2.5mm2] that's down on copper.

[vinylnvalves]

Okay .. even better, must have mis-read your first post, damm should have order 20m of it. Even if it doesn’t live up to expectations, I can weigh it in for scrap

[Scottmoose]

Thus far it's lived up to mine, in that as far as I can tell it has zero audible influence, which is pretty much exactly what I want from wire. Certainly, I've found nothing in the measurements I took of it to suggest any either. Whether it's really any better for my application than my usual Supra Classic 4.0 is another matter, since it too basically does nothing, and has no audible signature at the lengths & power levels I can use.

[vinylnvalves]

Cable arrived going to be a challenge to fit it through the Speakon cable gland

[Scottmoose]

Well, I did say it was big.

[IslandPink]

Cable arrived going to be a challenge to fit it through the Speakon cable gland

Please don't try and push it into your gland !

[Scottmoose]

A very painful thing to do, so I'm told.