Monster Cable Hype
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From: NoVa
Great job guys!!! The way this thread went definately surprised me. I was just tired of hearing local distributers "push" Monster on people! People that don't know any better get ripped off like that all the time, and it's pretty sad that's the way places have to do business. After reading through all these posts, I hope it will help people out some before they just listen to the salesman. The internet is a great place for info, especially sites like these. There's ALWAYS someone out there that knows more about something than you do, and it's great when those people take their time to write about their experiences and knowledge! I've gotten to the point to where I research almost everything I purchase nowadays.
A+ THREAD!!!
A+ THREAD!!!
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My message is too long so I'm sending it as two messages.
I was just looking for a wiring diagram for a '96 Ford Exploder -er- Explorer so I can figure out why both the cruise control and the horn are dead, but I stumbled upon this thread.
Very good discussion going here.
I thought I'd add my two cents' worth to the discussion on various points raised here.
Electrical conductivity of metallic elements in descending order is:
Silver
Copper
Aluminum
Gold
Silver is slightly better than copper and copper is significantly better than aluminum.
Gold sort of sucks but since it is soft and does not corrode easily, it's a good choice for *low level* electrical contacts where the current is very low. When you mate two gold contacts together, the soft metal actually smears a bit and you get very clean gold squished against other very clean gold. The metal actually flows together and you get a molecular bond. This is nice for the low level signals because you absolutely avoid any sort of point-contact diode effect. With most metals, when you mate the contacts, you actually have metal oxide touching metal oxide. That forms a diode or diodes, which gives you a non-linear relationship between the voltage across the contacts and the current flowing through them. In short, it sounds like crap!
Copper is a better conductor, but it oxidizes easily and silver is an even better conductor but it really loves to oxidize and silver oxide (as anyone who has tried to clean tarnish off of silver will tell you) is a hard oxide. It takes a lot to scrub through it. So silver is a poor choice for low-level contacts.
However, silver is the best conductor so it's a good choice for high current contacts. In high power applications, the oxide layer is blown off by the high pulse of current or it's actually scraped off each time the contacts operate by sheer mechanical force. In motor starters (the big contactors (relays) used to control large motors), the contacts are always "coin silver" alloy. And, the contactors are designed to force the contacts to smash together and then slide across each other for a short distance each time the contacts close. This scrapes through the oxide and gives you a fresh silver-to-silver contact each time the contacts close. The silver is necessary to carry the very high currents without overheating due to the resistance. The mechanical design and the extreme force under which the contacts are forced together gives you the clean contact required.
Now, in highly corrosive environments, gold plated contacts are actually a bad thing since the gold plating is always porous and allows the corrosive gasses to attack the metal under the gold (normally nickel). The nickel or other metal under the gold just goes away and the gold all flakes off. I've seen ICs used in the oilfields where there is a lot of H2S gas actually have their little legs eaten right off. It's the gold plated ICs who died while the good old tin plated leads were just fine for many years. So if you're in a corrosive environment (H2S, HCL fumes, etc.) you should insist on tin plated contacts and always used tinned conductors.
Many people have made the point that the resistance of the wire is the main thing that's important for speaker wire. But most have said that it's just a matter of power handling, which implies that if the wire doesn't overheat, it's ok for the job.
Although the effects may be subtle, there are some other considerations here. For a speaker to do what you want, the power amplifier must be able to control the motion of the speaker cone.
The speaker consists of a magnet, a voice coil, and the cone. The current through the voice coil sets up a magnetic field, which interacts with the speaker magnet's field to create force. That force moves the speaker cone. Now ideally, the speaker cone's movement should mimic the voltage waveform of the recorded material. If there is no resistance or other reactance between the amplifier and the speaker, the voltage, which appears across the speaker’s voice coil, will be exactly the same as the amplifier's output voltage.
The job of the speaker wire is to try to accomplish this task but allow you to place the speakers somewhere other than right at the amplifier location.
Since the speaker behaves as a very reactive load (having both capacitance and inductance) instead of a pure resistance, and because the actual moving mass of the speaker cone and voice coil assembly will actually cause the whole system to behave as an electrical generator, you end up with all sorts of things trying to fight the amplifier in its job of controlling the voltage across the voice coil.
An easy experiment to perform is to just use a common speaker as a microphone. It'll act as a generator and produce a voltage output that is related to the movement of the cone. For the amplifier to properly control the movement of the speaker cone, it must be able to apply the voltage it wants across the voice coil despite the opposition of the electromechanical effects as well as the inductance of the coil and the capacitance of the windings, etc.
In short, it's an extremely complex electrical load and cannot be adequately modeled as a pure resistance.
So, for the speaker wire to do its job perfectly, it should have zero resistance, zero inductance, and (to avoid any extra loading of the amplifier) it would be nice if it had zero capacitance. Now that isn't going to happen in the real world. But there is good reason to try to approach that as closely as possible.
Thus, as stated by many posters, the wire gauge needs to be fairly heavy. The heavier the better (ideally). This reduces the resistance of the wire.
But we still have the inductance of the cable to consider. Even if it isn't wrapped up as a coil, a single, straight piece of wire has some inductance. That inductance decouples the speaker voice coil from the amplifier just as surely as does the resistance of the wire. And it does it in a manner which is frequency dependant which is even worse.
The only way I know of to reduce the inductance of a cable is to form that cable of multiple separately insulated conductors. This is not the same as stranding of the wire. I mean that you have to run multiple insulated wires in parallel. This places the inductances in parallel which lowers that inductance. This is also a real pain in the rear and that’s' why you rarely see it done. But there are examples (search for "Litz wire" and see what pops up).
Now reducing the capacitance between the two conductors feeding the speaker or reducing their capacitance to other nearby conductive items (the metal parts of the car, for example) requires that you space the actual conductors away from each other and away from the conductive car parts. This can be done by just having thicker insulation on the wire.
Now some of all of this effort will have little or no audible effect so it just isn't worth the trouble or expense. How much is enough is a matter for endless debate. However, in a home system, I have personally replaced lamp cord with some homemade cables which were fashioned from multiple individual silver plated OFHC Teflon insulated conductors. (24ga wire-wrap wire, actually) It's cheap and easy to work with.
Anyhow, after making this change, and without telling the other roommates in the house, I got unsolicited comments from several of them wondering what had been done to the stereo! So the effect was far from subtle. Now one could argue about whether it was better or worse, but it was clearly different, and to my ears, better and worth the little expense and effort required to build these cables. But that isn't a controlled double-blind experiment, so you have to take it as only anecdotal evidence for whatever it's worth.
And this was in a home system that was pretty nice and had a good well set-up listening room, not a noisy Ford rolling down the road.
This brings up another point that I believe is misunderstood by many of the readers of this forum. That is the concept of oxygen free copper. What is being referred to when we talk about OF copper is that the copper itself is as free of oxygen as possible. This has nothing to do with the insulation on the wire excluding contact with oxygen. It does have to do with how the copper itself is produced. Having oxygen in the copper reduces its conductivity. It also causes the copper to be more brittle and allows it to work-harden more easily. Again, whether or not you're going to hear it is debatable, but we should at least understand what's being said. There is argument about the OFHC copper being better because the crystals are larger so there are fewer crystal-to-crystal interfaces, etc. Keep in mind that scientists to this day argue about how electrical conduction actually occurs in a normal conductor. We have a good enough model of what's happening to allow us to do lots of cool stuff with electricity, but on a quantum level, there is debate as to what's really happening. Do a search for "quantum tunneling" and see what pops up.
This also leads to some various comments about corrosion of the actual copper in the wire. Ideally, you want the insulation to protect the copper from corrosion for a number of reasons. Enough said.
(see next post for the rest of this diatribe)
I was just looking for a wiring diagram for a '96 Ford Exploder -er- Explorer so I can figure out why both the cruise control and the horn are dead, but I stumbled upon this thread.
Very good discussion going here.
I thought I'd add my two cents' worth to the discussion on various points raised here.
Electrical conductivity of metallic elements in descending order is:
Silver
Copper
Aluminum
Gold
Silver is slightly better than copper and copper is significantly better than aluminum.
Gold sort of sucks but since it is soft and does not corrode easily, it's a good choice for *low level* electrical contacts where the current is very low. When you mate two gold contacts together, the soft metal actually smears a bit and you get very clean gold squished against other very clean gold. The metal actually flows together and you get a molecular bond. This is nice for the low level signals because you absolutely avoid any sort of point-contact diode effect. With most metals, when you mate the contacts, you actually have metal oxide touching metal oxide. That forms a diode or diodes, which gives you a non-linear relationship between the voltage across the contacts and the current flowing through them. In short, it sounds like crap!
Copper is a better conductor, but it oxidizes easily and silver is an even better conductor but it really loves to oxidize and silver oxide (as anyone who has tried to clean tarnish off of silver will tell you) is a hard oxide. It takes a lot to scrub through it. So silver is a poor choice for low-level contacts.
However, silver is the best conductor so it's a good choice for high current contacts. In high power applications, the oxide layer is blown off by the high pulse of current or it's actually scraped off each time the contacts operate by sheer mechanical force. In motor starters (the big contactors (relays) used to control large motors), the contacts are always "coin silver" alloy. And, the contactors are designed to force the contacts to smash together and then slide across each other for a short distance each time the contacts close. This scrapes through the oxide and gives you a fresh silver-to-silver contact each time the contacts close. The silver is necessary to carry the very high currents without overheating due to the resistance. The mechanical design and the extreme force under which the contacts are forced together gives you the clean contact required.
Now, in highly corrosive environments, gold plated contacts are actually a bad thing since the gold plating is always porous and allows the corrosive gasses to attack the metal under the gold (normally nickel). The nickel or other metal under the gold just goes away and the gold all flakes off. I've seen ICs used in the oilfields where there is a lot of H2S gas actually have their little legs eaten right off. It's the gold plated ICs who died while the good old tin plated leads were just fine for many years. So if you're in a corrosive environment (H2S, HCL fumes, etc.) you should insist on tin plated contacts and always used tinned conductors.
Many people have made the point that the resistance of the wire is the main thing that's important for speaker wire. But most have said that it's just a matter of power handling, which implies that if the wire doesn't overheat, it's ok for the job.
Although the effects may be subtle, there are some other considerations here. For a speaker to do what you want, the power amplifier must be able to control the motion of the speaker cone.
The speaker consists of a magnet, a voice coil, and the cone. The current through the voice coil sets up a magnetic field, which interacts with the speaker magnet's field to create force. That force moves the speaker cone. Now ideally, the speaker cone's movement should mimic the voltage waveform of the recorded material. If there is no resistance or other reactance between the amplifier and the speaker, the voltage, which appears across the speaker’s voice coil, will be exactly the same as the amplifier's output voltage.
The job of the speaker wire is to try to accomplish this task but allow you to place the speakers somewhere other than right at the amplifier location.
Since the speaker behaves as a very reactive load (having both capacitance and inductance) instead of a pure resistance, and because the actual moving mass of the speaker cone and voice coil assembly will actually cause the whole system to behave as an electrical generator, you end up with all sorts of things trying to fight the amplifier in its job of controlling the voltage across the voice coil.
An easy experiment to perform is to just use a common speaker as a microphone. It'll act as a generator and produce a voltage output that is related to the movement of the cone. For the amplifier to properly control the movement of the speaker cone, it must be able to apply the voltage it wants across the voice coil despite the opposition of the electromechanical effects as well as the inductance of the coil and the capacitance of the windings, etc.
In short, it's an extremely complex electrical load and cannot be adequately modeled as a pure resistance.
So, for the speaker wire to do its job perfectly, it should have zero resistance, zero inductance, and (to avoid any extra loading of the amplifier) it would be nice if it had zero capacitance. Now that isn't going to happen in the real world. But there is good reason to try to approach that as closely as possible.
Thus, as stated by many posters, the wire gauge needs to be fairly heavy. The heavier the better (ideally). This reduces the resistance of the wire.
But we still have the inductance of the cable to consider. Even if it isn't wrapped up as a coil, a single, straight piece of wire has some inductance. That inductance decouples the speaker voice coil from the amplifier just as surely as does the resistance of the wire. And it does it in a manner which is frequency dependant which is even worse.
The only way I know of to reduce the inductance of a cable is to form that cable of multiple separately insulated conductors. This is not the same as stranding of the wire. I mean that you have to run multiple insulated wires in parallel. This places the inductances in parallel which lowers that inductance. This is also a real pain in the rear and that’s' why you rarely see it done. But there are examples (search for "Litz wire" and see what pops up).
Now reducing the capacitance between the two conductors feeding the speaker or reducing their capacitance to other nearby conductive items (the metal parts of the car, for example) requires that you space the actual conductors away from each other and away from the conductive car parts. This can be done by just having thicker insulation on the wire.
Now some of all of this effort will have little or no audible effect so it just isn't worth the trouble or expense. How much is enough is a matter for endless debate. However, in a home system, I have personally replaced lamp cord with some homemade cables which were fashioned from multiple individual silver plated OFHC Teflon insulated conductors. (24ga wire-wrap wire, actually) It's cheap and easy to work with.
Anyhow, after making this change, and without telling the other roommates in the house, I got unsolicited comments from several of them wondering what had been done to the stereo! So the effect was far from subtle. Now one could argue about whether it was better or worse, but it was clearly different, and to my ears, better and worth the little expense and effort required to build these cables. But that isn't a controlled double-blind experiment, so you have to take it as only anecdotal evidence for whatever it's worth.
And this was in a home system that was pretty nice and had a good well set-up listening room, not a noisy Ford rolling down the road.
This brings up another point that I believe is misunderstood by many of the readers of this forum. That is the concept of oxygen free copper. What is being referred to when we talk about OF copper is that the copper itself is as free of oxygen as possible. This has nothing to do with the insulation on the wire excluding contact with oxygen. It does have to do with how the copper itself is produced. Having oxygen in the copper reduces its conductivity. It also causes the copper to be more brittle and allows it to work-harden more easily. Again, whether or not you're going to hear it is debatable, but we should at least understand what's being said. There is argument about the OFHC copper being better because the crystals are larger so there are fewer crystal-to-crystal interfaces, etc. Keep in mind that scientists to this day argue about how electrical conduction actually occurs in a normal conductor. We have a good enough model of what's happening to allow us to do lots of cool stuff with electricity, but on a quantum level, there is debate as to what's really happening. Do a search for "quantum tunneling" and see what pops up.
This also leads to some various comments about corrosion of the actual copper in the wire. Ideally, you want the insulation to protect the copper from corrosion for a number of reasons. Enough said.
(see next post for the rest of this diatribe)
New User
Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 2
Likes: 0
My post, continued:
The subject of "skin effect" has also been brought up in this discussion. Skin effect is the mechanism whereby at higher frequencies, the current in a conductor is forced out to the outer surface of the conductor. At DC or very low frequencies, there is no skin effect, and the full cross section of the wire is available equally to carry the free electrons. But as the frequency increases, the magnetic fields inside the conductor tend to force the conduction to the outside or "skin" of the conductor.
Again, since all of the strands in a good, non-corroded cable are in contact with each other, they actually form (for the purposes of skin effect) a single conductor. So having more strands in the wire does not help because the magnetic field cuts right through the various strands and pushes the current to the outer layer of the outer strands in the cable. Of course there are all sorts of strange things that actually go on because the strands aren't perfectly connected to each other, etc. etc. I'm sure that it's all quite chaotic on a microscopic level and the stranding adds to the complexity of the system.
In high power radio equipment, because of skin effect, often copper tubing is used in place of solid wire because the current will mostly be flowing on the outer surface anyhow, so why pay for copper that isn't being used? This is also the case with radio antennas. Tubing of the same diameter as a solid conductor will perform equally at the high RF frequencies and is lighter and cheaper.
Skin effect increases as the frequency goes up. Again, people can argue as to whether it's significant at audio frequencies, but it does have some effect. And, much like the inductance of the wire, the skin effect will tend to resist high frequencies more than low frequencies. So you actually have something that is now affecting the frequency response of the system.
So what do I use for speaker wire in my crappy old Ford? 16 gauge lamp cord, actually. But I don't have a really great stereo in the beast so who am I to ask.
I actually prefer a good pair of over-the-ear, noise-proof headphones and a cheap walkman style disc player. No car stereo can equal it and I don't go deaf because the headphones reduce the road noise so I can hear the soft parts without needing to listen at ear damaging levels.
And if you say it's dangerous, why do they have no problem giving deaf people drivers' licenses? (I actually only do this when on the highway out here in the wide open spaces of Wyoming where I live if that makes you all feel safer). And, listening to car stereo through speakers at loud levels is just as unsafe or worse than using headphones in my opinion. I can't stand to do either when driving in town where I want to hear sirens and other sounds which clue me in to what's going on around me.
So now, does anyone know what fuse or ground connection might kill both the horn and the cruise control on a '96 Exploder?
See you all later!
Sigmo
The subject of "skin effect" has also been brought up in this discussion. Skin effect is the mechanism whereby at higher frequencies, the current in a conductor is forced out to the outer surface of the conductor. At DC or very low frequencies, there is no skin effect, and the full cross section of the wire is available equally to carry the free electrons. But as the frequency increases, the magnetic fields inside the conductor tend to force the conduction to the outside or "skin" of the conductor.
Again, since all of the strands in a good, non-corroded cable are in contact with each other, they actually form (for the purposes of skin effect) a single conductor. So having more strands in the wire does not help because the magnetic field cuts right through the various strands and pushes the current to the outer layer of the outer strands in the cable. Of course there are all sorts of strange things that actually go on because the strands aren't perfectly connected to each other, etc. etc. I'm sure that it's all quite chaotic on a microscopic level and the stranding adds to the complexity of the system.
In high power radio equipment, because of skin effect, often copper tubing is used in place of solid wire because the current will mostly be flowing on the outer surface anyhow, so why pay for copper that isn't being used? This is also the case with radio antennas. Tubing of the same diameter as a solid conductor will perform equally at the high RF frequencies and is lighter and cheaper.
Skin effect increases as the frequency goes up. Again, people can argue as to whether it's significant at audio frequencies, but it does have some effect. And, much like the inductance of the wire, the skin effect will tend to resist high frequencies more than low frequencies. So you actually have something that is now affecting the frequency response of the system.
So what do I use for speaker wire in my crappy old Ford? 16 gauge lamp cord, actually. But I don't have a really great stereo in the beast so who am I to ask.
I actually prefer a good pair of over-the-ear, noise-proof headphones and a cheap walkman style disc player. No car stereo can equal it and I don't go deaf because the headphones reduce the road noise so I can hear the soft parts without needing to listen at ear damaging levels.
And if you say it's dangerous, why do they have no problem giving deaf people drivers' licenses? (I actually only do this when on the highway out here in the wide open spaces of Wyoming where I live if that makes you all feel safer). And, listening to car stereo through speakers at loud levels is just as unsafe or worse than using headphones in my opinion. I can't stand to do either when driving in town where I want to hear sirens and other sounds which clue me in to what's going on around me.
So now, does anyone know what fuse or ground connection might kill both the horn and the cruise control on a '96 Exploder?
See you all later!
Sigmo
Elder User
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 649
Likes: 1
From: Monterey bay area
re:This brings up another point that I believe is misunderstood by many of the readers of this forum. That is the concept of oxygen free copper
----------------------------------------------
I would agree that most misunderstand the OFHC term......and the statement I put out there was referring to the jacket being so thick it almost permeates the outter most layer of cable strands, which is good insulation for automotive purposes since the elements would indeed take their toll on a more vulnerable thin jacketed cable.
re:There is argument about the OFHC copper being better because the crystals are larger so there are fewer crystal-to-crystal interfaces, etc.
-------------------------------------------------
The arguement regarding crystal to crystal interfaces is in regards to the tightness of the lattice structures which has a direct relatioship with purity..when dopants or impurities are present, the function and specific heat of the metal or alloys is affected for better or for worse.
If impurities are present and the right conditions are achieved, salts, compounds will form due to the heat and the presence of additional unwanted elements. This is known as an oxidation state.
re:When you mate two gold contacts together, the soft metal actually smears a bit and you get very clean gold squished against other very clean gold
-----------------------------------
AKA maleability
re: I'm sure that it's all quite chaotic on a microscopic level and the stranding adds to the complexity of the system.
---------------------------------------------------
The skin effect is mostly limited to RF frequency power and transmission and presents a mostly negligible effect on audible frequencies. Multistranded cables have less of an issue with skin effect because each individual strand has a smaller cross sectional area than the skin depth at that frequency.
Nature has its way of behacing in a chaotic order....however, if one looks beyond the surface you will see that a specific order is followed. This is the entire basis of chaos theory of mathematics....which takes discreet math and turns in on its head.
re:Skin effect increases as the frequency goes up. Again, people can argue as to whether it's significant at audio frequencies, but it does have some effect.
---------------------------------------------------
let's try 0.002dbs @20khz = some effect LMAO!!!
The LItz cable setup has its uses.....but for automotive audio....I don't imagine it would be feasible to dill a hole 1 inch in diameter in your doors to run the cable to your speakers...or 1.5 inches diamter hole in the firewall to run the cable to your amp....
Again, great information but let's keep in mind the applications.
----------------------------------------------
I would agree that most misunderstand the OFHC term......and the statement I put out there was referring to the jacket being so thick it almost permeates the outter most layer of cable strands, which is good insulation for automotive purposes since the elements would indeed take their toll on a more vulnerable thin jacketed cable.
re:There is argument about the OFHC copper being better because the crystals are larger so there are fewer crystal-to-crystal interfaces, etc.
-------------------------------------------------
The arguement regarding crystal to crystal interfaces is in regards to the tightness of the lattice structures which has a direct relatioship with purity..when dopants or impurities are present, the function and specific heat of the metal or alloys is affected for better or for worse.
If impurities are present and the right conditions are achieved, salts, compounds will form due to the heat and the presence of additional unwanted elements. This is known as an oxidation state.
re:When you mate two gold contacts together, the soft metal actually smears a bit and you get very clean gold squished against other very clean gold
-----------------------------------
AKA maleability
re: I'm sure that it's all quite chaotic on a microscopic level and the stranding adds to the complexity of the system.
---------------------------------------------------
The skin effect is mostly limited to RF frequency power and transmission and presents a mostly negligible effect on audible frequencies. Multistranded cables have less of an issue with skin effect because each individual strand has a smaller cross sectional area than the skin depth at that frequency.
Nature has its way of behacing in a chaotic order....however, if one looks beyond the surface you will see that a specific order is followed. This is the entire basis of chaos theory of mathematics....which takes discreet math and turns in on its head.
re:Skin effect increases as the frequency goes up. Again, people can argue as to whether it's significant at audio frequencies, but it does have some effect.
---------------------------------------------------
let's try 0.002dbs @20khz = some effect LMAO!!!
The LItz cable setup has its uses.....but for automotive audio....I don't imagine it would be feasible to dill a hole 1 inch in diameter in your doors to run the cable to your speakers...or 1.5 inches diamter hole in the firewall to run the cable to your amp....
Again, great information but let's keep in mind the applications.
Last edited by Capone; Feb 13, 2004 at 08:00 AM.
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