Belden ICONOCLAST Interconnects and Speaker Cabling

Evil man :grinning:

Intriguing.

I never would have never thought to check and would have missed this.

Good, I don’t have to change speaker cables then as I hear phase changes clear as day using PS Audio xStream Statement speaker cables. :wink:

To be succinct, what Kurt just said I can vouch for. I think you said it well, Kurt, and we need to keep in mind that the Iconoclast cables are just the tip of Galen’s iceberg. This is not the first time that he’s come up with successful designs that change the way people think about cabling, it’s just been for other applications that many of us wouldn’t have any interest in. Belden has had a reputation for innovation. I think most of us realize that but don’t realize that Galen has been a big part of that. There are just a handful of engineers on the team at Belden. Lebron just left the building.

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Thanks Kurt. ICONOCLAST has nothing to fear but measurement itself. That’s how it was made, with lots of paper work and Cad design with calculations from the world we know, verses that magic world we don’t.

If anything makes ICONOCLAST different, it is that it was born based on measurement only. The cable was made on paper before it hit the manufacturing floor.

Some will argue the cost and complexity to make them, and I certainly KNOW the costs as I did indeed design and manufracture them.

Like Kurt said, ICONOCLAST offers a more calculated approach to cables, and IF better balanced R,L and C offer benefit to you. I have tried to show what and how I made them, as it is factually interesting, to support the improved measured data.

The 4x4 interconnects were born from CAD analysis to further balance electricals. And yes, the R, L and C responded per calculations.

Galen Gareis

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This must have been immensely satisfying.

Yes, another healthy child born.

Phase and timing improvements with the Iconoclasts prompted me to adjust my speaker placement, which improved the soundstage. I’m noticing more cable manufacturers and reviewers are now talking about measurements. However they babble on about the need for solid silver wire and still throw in some pseudo science or voodoo. When Galen has created great sounding cable with superior cable design starting with only TPC copper. I read this recent cable jargon from one manufacture “mechanically tuned spacing” to describe their flat speaker cable, and thought what the hell is that.

Conductors aren’t magic. Aluminum is the most coherent material based on size (skin depth is deeper at any given frequency). You need to adjust for the resistance and work hardening with aluminum. Speaker voice coils are often aluminum for reduced weight and are cemented in place to fix the work hardening issues. So before you say aluminum is “cheap” better prepare for the facts that the last thing your signal may more than likely be going through is aluminum.

It is problematic to use aluminum in speaker and interconnect leads as it work hardens, is harder to properly terminate, and can oxidize pretty quickly (copper skin helps) before being sealed from air. Copper or other materials can be drawn smaller, and this somewhat offsets the skin depth coherence issue…assuming you can manage lots of small wires properly in your design!

Copper is 461 um and aluminum is 579 um skin depth. Aluminum is 26% more efficient at moving the higher frequencies INTO the wire, exactly what we need at audio. The copper layer, to aid solder ability and oxidation should not be too thick. It isn’t there for the sound, in other words.

The other parameter, DCR, is an issue ONLY with high current speaker cables. The resistivity of copper is 1.678 and aluminum is 2.6548. This is Circular Mil Area (CMA) based, not diameter. You’ll need about a 58% larger CMA to match copper in resistance. If you have a 20 mil copper wire, 400 CMA, you need a 400*1.58 = 632 CMA or a 25-mil copper. The larger size will reduce or give back some of the coherence gain in high current cables. 25-mil is 25% larger than the copper wire to meet DCR, so the 26% deeper skin depth penetration is offset for DCR. This is why the technology is INTERCONNECT only if DCR is to be the same or even higher. Sacrifice DCR for coherence and things are possibly different.

Silver is worse than copper for skin depth coherence. The lower resistance can allow SOME mitigation of this but not enough. And, it is $$$ and oxidizes in process requiring handling considerations.

In the overall world of what we know, material science is still science.

Galen Gareis

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Galen,

Is it Belden’s stance that its 5T00UP 10g speaker cable has high frequency loss? There’s been some discussion here (Order of upgrade importance) in another thread that this is (a) known by Belden and (b) printed in its own literature.

I don’t want to open up a can of worms here AT ALL, I would just like to know whether this is the case or not. No desire for debate whatsoever :slight_smile:

Galen,

I understand you were opposed to SPTPC until some point where you were not. Since the skin depth is worse for silver, was it the character of the sound that won you over?

I supposed gold would truly be cost prohibitive :wink:

Here we go with facts verses application of those facts. I would have to have the Rs of the cable MEASURED, same as I did for 1313A and ICONOCLAST (below). But, one data point in itself doesn’t all by itself describe what you hear. Cable’s are short, so attenuation issues are tougher to hear. “Normalized” to a substantial length it may look significant but at the length of the application it isn’t as significant taken by itself. Look at the UNITS! Those are small changes in the length you use, but added to everything else it matters.

ICONOCLAST is an every issue needs to be addressed type of project. What happens when you do that how ever difficult?

The easiest way to discount attributes, is to look at them in isolation, then any SINGLE one can seem to be immaterial. My cable is “perfect”. I chose to optimize as many variables as I could in a differing DESIGN and see what happens in use.

My experience suggests that phase related issue seem to be more audible than straight-up attenuation. Eating my own words also suggest that the final performance is death by a thousand cuts, each one has a cumulative effect. Trial a different design and see what you hear.

I have no idea where the, “known by Belden” issue was quoted. We print what the cable DOES per industry guidelines. 10 AWG wires are going to be hard pressed to have DCR issues in the audio band, but larger solid wire WILL act differently than insulated smaller AWG strands above DCR. This is not a can of worms, it is just the way it is.

Galen Gareis

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Thank you, Galen! I REALLY appreciate your followup and insight. I’ll link your response on the other discussion thread. This “known by Belden” comment came from another forum user who simply related these were Belden’s own findings and was inferring it was an inferior cable for higher frequencies.

For one, I’m enjoying my Belden 5T00UP cable very much! Sounds great with my PS Audio gear (Gain Cell DAC and S300 amp) and Monitor Audio Silver 300’s. Thank you again.

Doug

Brett66

No, I was opposed to SOLID silver, and still am. It is $$$ and offers little over a good copper solution. The GRAIN properties of silver can also influence the sound, but I don’t have a bottomless pit of money to make the product and see if the grain properties offset the less coherent properties. I can bank on skin depth, I have to solid data on the grain structures effects on the PHASE across frequencies. This is one of the things that I think we hear that makes cable “different”.

The silver plated ETP design is affordable, so I offered this option for evaluation. Many feel it is substantially different than the OFE or TPC. Taken at first blush, the 40 micro inch silver plate can’t possible impact the fundamental of any musical instrument, that’s under 10K!, so it has to be the harmonics and how they move in the conductor. I have ZERO science that suggest a measurable effect. Rs (swept resistance) and other variables don’t show a repeatable measurable difference. Of course the wire IS different, but what does that difference really do? Try it and see how it acts in your system, I’m not knowledgeable enough to know what’s happening with the wire composition…it is above my paygrade into the quantum realm.

A digital equivalent would be the brick wall 16 bit filters pre and post ringing at just over 20 KHz. Going to 24 bit simply moves that brick wall pre and post ringing to above the audio band, the extra bits aren’t what makes it sound better, but the lack of audible pre and post ringing…and PHASE stuff our ears seem to HEAR really well. There seem to be trade-offs to remove the ringing with 16 bit signals, so going to 24 was an option, even if the original signal was 16 bit. Have to ask the experts what’s going on there and how filter non linearities are managed.

Galen Gareis

@brett66 -
Oh if I only had that kind of power :muhhahah:
The Eagles Hotel California SACD I ripped. Bam, clear as day.

SACD ripped - how? Other than I ripped it with dBpoweramp

Gold is a poorer conductor than copper. it just doesn’t corrode!

DBpoweramp and a Bluray rom drive?

Oppo 105 and a script of a hack.

@brett66 - As luck would have it, I own an OPPO 103 that is used in my Great room. Thanks for the script and will let you know how I make out. Happy Birthday to me… :slight_smile:

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@brett66 - where do I find the port setting for the OPPO 103? In the Sonore they are asking for port and IP. I have the IP, where do I find the port?