Doubling up on speaker cable

[slartibartfast]

I was reading Archimago's blog on Chinese copies of Nordost speaker cables and getting vaguely interested until I saw that even the price of knock-offs was still more than I wanted to spend. Thoughts turned to my own humble QED 79 strand from decades ago and on realising I had some extra up in the loft I wondered if running a second cable to each speaker would make any difference. I had a 7m cable to the left speaker and 3m to the right so I made them equal lengths and did the same with the cables from the loft and ran two 3m cables to each speaker leaving the bi-wire links in at the speaker end. I think it sounds better and I suppose the reduced resistance and inductance can't do any harm. The effective cross sectional area of each run is now 5 square millimetres.
Has anyone tried something similar?

 

[harkpabst]

With two (identical) runs of cable in parallel the resistance and inductance might be reduced but the effective capacitance is increased at the same time. It's like a thicker cable to start with, just a little worse.

If any of these effects are audible depends on the amp and the speakers, of course. Personally, I wouldn't take the time to even try it.

 

[slartibartfast]

With two (identical) runs of cable in parallel the resistance and inductance might be reduced but the effective capacitance is increased at the same time. It's like a thicker cable to start with, just a little worse.

If any of these effects are audible depends on the amp and the speakers, of course. Personally, I wouldn't take the time to even try it.

The capacitance probably isn't that important. WiiM amp in this case. I may as well leave them connected now. I have no idea how important equal lengths are either, maybe just doing that would have some effect. If I hadn't had the spare cables I probably wouldn't have bothered either but googling afterwards I found some supporters of the idea but there would be wouldn't there

 

[harkpabst]

The capacitance probably isn't that important.

I'd say it depends, as always.

Now you have matching cable pairs, rip the plus and minus strands apart and make some nicely braided cables from the four single strands:

Custom made braided 12awg speaker cable

Low-inductance handmade speaker cable - 18awg wires braided to 12AWG cable, terminated with banana plugs, TechFlex cable sleeving on top. ...

ooztbadialkomerc.blogspot.com

Cables will look great for sure!

 

[slartibartfast]

I'd say it depends, as always.

Now you have matching cable pairs, rip the plus and minus strands apart and make some nicely braided cables from the four single strands:

Custom made braided 12awg speaker cable

Low-inductance handmade speaker cable - 18awg wires braided to 12AWG cable, terminated with banana plugs, TechFlex cable sleeving on top. ...

ooztbadialkomerc.blogspot.com

Cables will look great for sure!

He seems to be using 4 twisted pairs for each cable.
This is where I found positive comments

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/doubling-a-set-of-speaker-cables

 

[dangermouse]

...but googling afterwards I found some supporters of the idea but there would be wouldn't there

It's Hi-Fi innit?

 

[slartibartfast]

It's Hi-Fi innit?

At least there could be a rational reason though