nzlowie Posted December 3, 2018 Share Posted December 3, 2018 Hi guys I brought some Litz wire from Aliexpress to try but haven't got around to using it yet as I vowed not to make any changes for a while! The cable is 120x.1 individually insulated strands, yes they are all insulated but solderable. Bit hard to scrap the enamel of .1mm strands... Simple polyester insulation on the outside but I'm sure we could do better than that. Anyone tried or thought about making interconnects or speaker cables from this type of wire? Cable link Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thekman76 Posted December 3, 2018 Share Posted December 3, 2018 It has to be said, the description makes it very hard to believe they're really individually insulated strands. Happy to be proved wrong though! The easiest way to get rid of the enamel is with a flame, then steel wool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Muon N' Posted December 3, 2018 Share Posted December 3, 2018 (edited) It does say "polyester silk envelope" That sounds like the outer sheath is composed of polyester/silk. But then it says lower down... Item specifics Brand Name: cltgxdd Type: Bare Conductor Type: Solid Model Number: 0.1x120 strands Conductor Material: Copper is_customized: Yes Application: enamelled copper wire Insulation Material: Polyurethane enameled Wire Very confusing! If it is Litz, it can still be hit an miss on materials quality going by the pricing. I have only ever tried 2 types of Litz in my system, one was Cadas and the other were Litz cables from Geoff at Aurealis Audio. The Cardas I didn't like as it sounded smeared to my ears, where as the Aurealis Cables were one of the best I have ever heard, if not the best. Guess at the price It's not going to kill the pocket to do a small order, or could email them for clarification. But looking at pricing of their other enamelled wire I'll remain sceptical without more information. Edited December 3, 2018 by Muon N' typo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nzlowie Posted December 3, 2018 Author Share Posted December 3, 2018 Yes they are individually insulated strands, verified with multi meter. Found that a really hot soldering iron and solder burns the enamel of and they solder up well. So being all insulated strand makes it sort of litz wire, may not be true litz due to the winding pattern but..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Muon N' Posted December 3, 2018 Share Posted December 3, 2018 If it as you say, then It's Litz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litz_wire Hope it sound good eough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ittaku Posted December 3, 2018 Share Posted December 3, 2018 9 hours ago, nzlowie said: So being all insulated strand makes it sort of litz wire, may not be true litz due to the winding pattern but..... Litz doesn't imply anything to do with the winding pattern, just the separately insulated strands. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thekman76 Posted December 3, 2018 Share Posted December 3, 2018 8 hours ago, nzlowie said: Yes they are individually insulated strands, verified with multi meter. There you go! Litz wire is exactly that, whether it's enamel or another dielectric material is irrelevant, as is the pattern, it's all about skin and proximity effects. 8 hours ago, nzlowie said: Found that a really hot soldering iron and solder burns the enamel of and they solder up well. Not ideal really as you'll get lots of carbon inclusions in your solder which makes it porous. Depending on the solder/flux combination you may also capture quite a bit of flux in the solder too which could lead to corrosion. With so many fine strands I'd also be inclined to use a separate flux which can be wiped off so you don't have it migrating up the strands. The very small extra effort to do it right might just make a huge difference. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Muon N' Posted December 3, 2018 Share Posted December 3, 2018 27 minutes ago, Thekman76 said: There you go! Litz wire is exactly that, whether it's enamel or another dielectric material is irrelevant, as is the pattern, it's all about skin and proximity effects. By that definition wouldn't that make Cat cable Litz? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thekman76 Posted December 4, 2018 Share Posted December 4, 2018 If you're talking about Category 5/6/7 Ethernet cable, not really. Ethernet is intended to be used in twisted/balanced pairs for cummunications, while Litz wire was intended to resolve skin effect problems in transformer windings where no balanced pair exists. That said, there is absolutely no reason you can't terminate all eight conductors in Ethernet cable together and call it Ether-Litz wire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nzlowie Posted December 4, 2018 Author Share Posted December 4, 2018 1 hour ago, Thekman76 said: while Litz wire was intended to resolve skin effect problems in transformer windings where no balanced pair exists So does this mean that when using Litz wire you don't need to configure as a twisted pair? I thought the idea behind a twisted pair was for unwanted signal rejection? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ittaku Posted December 4, 2018 Share Posted December 4, 2018 47 minutes ago, nzlowie said: So does this mean that when using Litz wire you don't need to configure as a twisted pair? I thought the idea behind a twisted pair was for unwanted signal rejection? Litz is for keeping the same conductance across a wide range of frequencies. Twisted pairs are designed to reject outside signal influence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Muon N' Posted December 4, 2018 Share Posted December 4, 2018 2 hours ago, Thekman76 said: If you're talking about Category 5/6/7 Ethernet cable, not really. Ethernet is intended to be used in twisted/balanced pairs for cummunications, while Litz wire was intended to resolve skin effect problems in transformer windings where no balanced pair exists. That said, there is absolutely no reason you can't terminate all eight conductors in Ethernet cable together and call it Ether-Litz wire. Ether-Litz Love it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thekman76 Posted December 4, 2018 Share Posted December 4, 2018 5 hours ago, nzlowie said: So does this mean that when using Litz wire you don't need to configure as a twisted pair? OK, I could have been clearer. What I mean is that Litz wire wasn't intended to solve problems in communication systems, it was intended to solve problems in power transmission systems such as transformers and power lines. This doesn't preclude it's use in communications, it's just not an effective tool in very high frequency systems where the dielectric is vastly more important. Consider that communications transmission is low-power/high-frequency, while power transmission is typically low-frequency/high-power. Audio treads a middle ground where some of the techniques from both camps can be useful, but it also makes it more complex because you need to consider both types of transmission in the design. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Southerly Posted December 5, 2018 Share Posted December 5, 2018 Dialectric is hugely important. A long time ago, towards the end of the 19th century Oliver Heaviside who amongst other things worked with electrical conduction proved that - electricity travels not only through a conductor but around it, which makes a nonsense of 99% of all i/connects. I only came across this seminal work because of a snidy comment made by an American professor on an audio forum to prove how clever he was. Checking out who Oliver Heaviside was and his work completely changed the direction of my experimental work on i/connects - It's an ill wind and all that. So Heaviside's work on conduction fits perfectly with a 'received wisdom' (normally b/s) in the audio world that the best dialectric is air. This mantra about twisted pairs and rejection of unwanted interference is 99% of the time irrelevant but it does make it easier for commercial companies to make i/connects and save the time and expense in production in using a sheathing material. Those companies that do, do so because it makes the product look 'better' ergo more saleable. I wish I could find a technical college or university dept. run by someone with an open mind to do tests on solid core v stranded / bare v enamelled or wrapped wire./ straight v twisted / standard wrapped v air core dialectric / polyethelene v Teflon v FEP dialectric. To measure signal flow and with listening tests . It's strange that the scientific androids always rail against listening tests, indeed they actually pronounce without listening and their standard mantra is that those who can hear a difference are 'true believers' My take on multi-strand enamelled wire is that it contradicts what Heaviside found in verified tests a long time ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thekman76 Posted December 5, 2018 Share Posted December 5, 2018 Err, hi Stuart. On the one hand all of your input is great and we share a bunch of agreement. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure what point it is you're trying to make. The relationship between audio signal transmission/distortion and dielectric properties is a really interesting one which another member and I plan to do some testing on. We're each building some speakers cables; his with Teflon (the superior solid plastic dielectric) insulation, mine with PVC (arguably the absolute worst solid plastic dielectric) using identical conductors and geometry. We're also going to test the same geometry using PVC and stranded conductors of the same cross section area, just to see what, if anything, changes with stranded wire. So, this is all very interesting, but I'm not sure how to relate this to the OP. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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