BigYinUK Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Hi all Just how much of a problem in the real world is power loss over speaker cable in high power systems? With my rig (9.6kW) I decided to split the amp racks left and right so as to only run short 3m cables to the stacks. Its a bit of pain at times and would be neater to keep all the amps on one side of the stage but I've always stuck to my guns that its better to use a slightly smaller cross section cable (they coil better are lighter and cheaper), keep the cable length short and live with a rack either side that just needs mains run to it. I know some people will put their amps way back and run really quite considerable lengths of cable to their speakers but a bit of schoolboy ohm's law makes me skeptical. What are your thoughts? Regards Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Siddons Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 In my experience not a problem on normal sized stages and the ubiquitous trailer festival, practically I think your having to go above 30 metres to notice anything really, caveats on cable specs apply Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Lewis Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Poor damping factor can be more of a problem on long cable runs with low frequency drivers... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigYinUK Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 Poor damping factor can be more of a problem on long cable runs with low frequency drivers... Quoted as >300 at 1kHz on my EVs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jivemaster Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 I once replaced some 50m x 0.75mm^2 speaker leads with 50m x 2.5mm^2 and on the next event all the tweeters popped out because the clowns had set the knobs at the same point, not realising that it would be more powerful. IMO as long as the cables are well less resistance than the speaker impedence, there should be little drop in loudness, BUT bass bins could be soft and flappy as the damping factor plummets to zero. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystic Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I once replaced some 50m x 0.75mm^2 speaker leads (...)What ???? I don't even use .75mm^2 for speakers at home, this is waaaaaaay to small... If you have a good cable manufacturer you can get numbers on resistance and capacitance per meter of cable and acceptable current. if you do the math (well physics actually), you will realise that some cables are actually really good low pass filters. :) [edit] apparently there are some online calculators for that nowadays : http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-cable.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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