BeoWorld North America

Re: Speaker cable (power link) - what are the conductor sizes (awg)?

Lakelife1 — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:14:02 GMT

bumble:
.... but should otherwise be about $2.00/ft in bulk. Worth the lack of gray hair this way...

Thanks for the suggestion .. except the bulk cable now costs $4.80/ft from B&O. Now that does turn your hair gray! Ouch!!

I'll try to find another supplier.

Re: Speaker cable (power link) - what are the conductor sizes (awg)?

bumble — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:56:36 GMT

Best solution would be to purchase PowerLink thick in bulk from a B&O dealer then do the wire run yourself jack-jack. PL-thick tends to run more with the factory terminations but should otherwise be about $2.00/ft in bulk. Worth the lack of gray hair this way...

Re: Speaker cable (power link) - what are the conductor sizes (awg)?

Hagen2000 — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:52:42 GMT

Yes, exactly. However you should be aware that two separately shielded leads are required for left and right audio to avoid crosstalk between the channels. Thus 3-conductors + shield is not exactly what you will need!

The exakt dimension of the wires doesn´t matter so much IMO. You should use a cable that is suited to be used with LF signals (audio frequency range). The exact wire dimensions are more relevant with high frequency as used by e.g. GBit ethernet cables. Generally speaking a thicker cable will have less impedance and will lead to fewer signal degradation than a thinner cable.

Btw. thanks for clearing the exact meaning of "AWG"!

Re: Speaker cable (power link) - what are the conductor sizes (awg)?

Lakelife1 — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:39:38 GMT

Hagen2000:
.... As far as I know not really all pins need to be connected though I may be wrong with this.

According to the information given here: http://www.beoworld.org/beotech/wiring2.htm

a 3-conductor (brown, green, yellow) plus ground shield cable is the minimum. But what I like to know is the size of the conductors. Dimensions can be either in mm or awg (american wire gauge):

Re: Speaker cable (power link) - what are the conductor sizes (awg)?

Hagen2000 — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:29:16 GMT

For the BL8000 you will need two coaxial leads for left and right audio and an unshielded wire for the "Speaker On" signal. I fear that Ethernet cables (i.e. twisted pair / AWG xx) are not suited to replace B&O powerlink cables. Fully wired PowerLink cables also provide a shielded lead for data transmission. As far as I know not really all pins need to be connected though I may be wrong with this.

Re: Speaker cable (power link) - what are the conductor sizes (awg)?

Lakelife1 — Mon, 05 May 2008 23:35:35 GMT

Hi Michael,
I appreciate your comment and do agree. But I don't want to splice. I want to use two 8-pin DIN B&O wall plates (number 7210473) and run a cable similar to the $$$ B&O cable between them. My Beolabs 8000 then connect to the wall plate using short regular B&0 cables.

Re: Speaker cable (power link) - what are the conductor sizes (awg)?

Michael — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:23:54 GMT

You may want to be careful splicing cables for B&O speakers. At least in my case I've found that deviating from "certified" MKIII Powerlink cable is a recipe for introducing hum etc. The newer Ice powered models seemed to be more susceptible. I had to replace some cabling that I had professionally installed by B&O that caused some problems. The best solution for me was replacing the wiring with off the shelf B&O cables ($$$) and simply spooling the excess length. The PowerLink cables are extremely thin and splicing or mimicking the braiding/threading would seem to be difficult.

I would be interested to see if others have had success with custom cables. My guess is that you would have to deal with larger gauge than standard Powerlink to get stable power and signal

Speaker cable (power link) - what are the conductor sizes (awg)?

Lakelife1 — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:45:23 GMT

Since I want to do my own "behind the wall" wiring it would be very helpful to know what the size conductors are used in a 8-pin power link cable?

I have seen comments for sizes that range from 18 awg to 24 awg. Are all the six conductors of the same size, including the two shielded ones?

Thanks for any help!