Benefits & Drawbacks of High Capacitance Speaker Cables

cjf

Well-Known Member
Nov 19, 2012
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101
948
Hello,

I was curious to hear what some of the benefits and drawbacks are with using a speaker cable that has a higher then normal capacitance specification per/ft? I'm in the process of shopping for a new set of cables and I have so far only demo'd several cables from the Cardas line. By far the most impressive sounding model to these ears has been the Clear cables they offer. I've also demo'd the Golden Reference and own a pair of the Neutral Reference cables as well. Again, based on what I heard the Clears were literally Night and Day better then the other Cardas cables; but why?

With that said, I notice that these Clear Cables have a fairly high Capacitance per/ft compared to some other brands on the market that advertise this information. The ruler I have been using to gauge what I would consider a low Capacitance value in a wire is the Mogami line. Based on the cable specs that Mogami advertises I am then taking that number and "judging" the values advertised by other manufactures to determine if the Capacitance is considered higher than normal. This may be a flawed way to approach making a determination but since so few companies advertise the spec of their cables its all I've got at the moment besides my ears.

So I wonder how this higher Capacitance plays into what I heard during the demo's I've done. From an audibility standpoint it seems that my preference lies with a cable that has a big capacitance value. The Clears advertise a 278 pf/ft value while the Clear Beyond jump that number up to 446 pf/ft :eek:

But what does that really mean? How is this intentional increase in Capacitance benefiting or damaging the sound one hears out of their High FI rig? When taking cable length into consideration these Capacitance values can rise up into the 3xxx-5xxx range but despite this it doesn't seem to be doing any harm at least to my equipment and certainly seems to sound very good to my ears.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for any info you can provide.
 

Fitzcaraldo215

New Member
Nov 3, 2014
394
2
0
Hello,

I was curious to hear what some of the benefits and drawbacks are with using a speaker cable that has a higher then normal capacitance specification per/ft? I'm in the process of shopping for a new set of cables and I have so far only demo'd several cables from the Cardas line. By far the most impressive sounding model to these ears has been the Clear cables they offer. I've also demo'd the Golden Reference and own a pair of the Neutral Reference cables as well. Again, based on what I heard the Clears were literally Night and Day better then the other Cardas cables; but why?

With that said, I notice that these Clear Cables have a fairly high Capacitance per/ft compared to some other brands on the market that advertise this information. The ruler I have been using to gauge what I would consider a low Capacitance value in a wire is the Mogami line. Based on the cable specs that Mogami advertises I am then taking that number and "judging" the values advertised by other manufactures to determine if the Capacitance is considered higher than normal. This may be a flawed way to approach making a determination but since so few companies advertise the spec of their cables its all I've got at the moment besides my ears.

So I wonder how this higher Capacitance plays into what I heard during the demo's I've done. From an audibility standpoint it seems that my preference lies with a cable that has a big capacitance value. The Clears advertise a 278 pf/ft value while the Clear Beyond jump that number up to 446 pf/ft :eek:

But what does that really mean? How is this intentional increase in Capacitance benefiting or damaging the sound one hears out of their High FI rig? When taking cable length into consideration these Capacitance values can rise up into the 3xxx-5xxx range but despite this it doesn't seem to be doing any harm at least to my equipment and certainly seems to sound very good to my ears.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for any info you can provide.

You can obsess about specs, but capacitance is not considered an issue with speaker cables. Inductance and resistance are. With interconnects, capacitance can be an issue, however, but usually only for long runs.

The thing is a cable is dealing with electrical loads on both ends that are not completely and precisely known, especially with speakers where the load varies with frequency. A cable has to be synergistic and complementary to those loads. Even an Electrical Engineer could not tell you what will sound best, especially not to you and your ears. Note, however, that tube gear sometimes is more sensitive to cables than is sold state, because of the specic loading presented by the electronics.

So, we are back to the old trial and error via listening. I have done that a few times, and it is a royal pain because the differences can be really tiny. You really have to work at controlling your biases in the process. I did not find that the most expensive cable won the day for me. But, it is easy to delude oneself. However, if the differences are audibly small to minuscule, which has been my experience, what's the big deal? Just get the cheap one. A day later, you will have no idea what those differences were as you listen to the music instead of the cables. Don't let your mind and obsessions ruin your music listening.
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
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For most amplifiers capacitive loading is a don't-care. Even for tubes the roll-off is usually well above the audio band. Say 10 feet, 500 pF/foot, 1 ohm for amp and cable, and just multiplying the capacitance (too lazy to calculate the distributed effects) gives you about 31.83 kHz bandwidth. Your pet dogs and bats may be happier...

So likely little audible effect in the cable itself; as Fitz said it is all about amp/cable/speaker interaction.

The biggest con is likely to be the rare amplifier that goes unstable when presented with a highly-capacitive load. Since such instability tends to be exhibited as HF oscillation you won't know until a fuse blows or the amp overheats and shuts down, or worst-case fries your tweeters with full-amplitude suprasonic signal, but these days that is unlikely with a decent amp. Have seen it happen (once at CES!) in the past.

HTH - Don
 

DaveC

Industry Expert
Nov 16, 2014
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The only cables that could be an issue for too much capacitance are ribbon cables oriented one atop the other, like an unrolled film cap. Goertz sells a correction network so their cables won't cause problems. This is really an attempt to get the inductance as low as possible.

What seems to matter more is geometry, the right geometry is the key between an average and a good cable. Speaker cable performance is far more variable than interconnects as the amp and speaker load can vary quite a bit so you do have to try a ot of cables to get a handle on what's going on and even then you might not recognize the factors that make the better sounding cables sound better.

What I've noticed is most cables will provide relatively small differences UNTIL you try a cable that really works well in your system, then it can be a game changer. My SMSG OCC silver/gold alloy speaker cables often make a massive difference in a system that is ready for them, if you're trying Cardas vs 12g zip cord I think my SMSG cables will be in another league vs the Cardas cables and you're welcome to demo a pair.
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
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The cable that blew up amps was woven or braided, kind of a Litz-wire construction, many small individually-insulated wires all interleaved/interwoven in a bundle to create the cable. The idea was to reduce skin effect, as if that really matters at audio (and shows a clear lack of what skin effect really means and does), but at the end IIRC they had a cable with inductance marginally lower than a regular pair of speaker cables, similar resistance, and much (MUCH!) higher capacitance.
 

DaveC

Industry Expert
Nov 16, 2014
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The cable that blew up amps was woven or braided, kind of a Litz-wire construction, many small individually-insulated wires all interleaved/interwoven in a bundle to create the cable. The idea was to reduce skin effect, as if that really matters at audio (and shows a clear lack of what skin effect really means and does), but at the end IIRC they had a cable with inductance marginally lower than a regular pair of speaker cables, similar resistance, and much (MUCH!) higher capacitance.

Yeah, the DIY cat-5 cables... I made them many years ago and they suck. They are NOT made in a litz configuration though! They are made with twisted pairs used for +/- in a repetitive braided structure. An actual litz type arrangement would have worked far better. Goertz speaker cables can kill amps too if their correction network isn't purchased and used with them, they are basically unrolled capacitors.

Also, it is true that many strands of thinner wire arranged in a litz configuration is far better than single runs of larger wire.
 

cjf

Well-Known Member
Nov 19, 2012
452
101
948
Thanks for the info everyone.

I feel a bit more confident now that the higher Capacitance values that I was reading about are probably not something I should be concerned with.

The Cardas Clear cables that I demo'd were certainly ones that I would say offered a true WOW moment when I heard then in my system compared to the other Cardas models. I was using the 12ga Rat Shack zip cord for a short a short timee as a pallet cleanser so to speak. They certainly were very much sub par sounding even compared to the Marshall Soundrunner I am using now. I believe the Soundrunner is made by Mogami and offers a surprising level of SQ for the price but despite this I feel its still not something I would want to run forever. The Clears were significantly better still, at a price.

DaveC: I appreciate the offer to demo your cables and would certainly do so if I could but unfortunately I have a fairly sizeable credit already invested with the CableCo so I'm afraid I am stuck with the brands they have on offer.

Thanks again
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
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Yeah, the DIY cat-5 cables... I made them many years ago and they suck. They are NOT made in a litz configuration though! They are made with twisted pairs used for +/- in a repetitive braided structure. An actual litz type arrangement would have worked far better. Goertz speaker cables can kill amps too if their correction network isn't purchased and used with them, they are basically unrolled capacitors.

Also, it is true that many strands of thinner wire arranged in a litz configuration is far better than single runs of larger wire.

No, my example was from decades ago (1980's), but the DIY Cat-5 and similar have the same problem so yah...
 

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