Might be a silly question but...wire gauges

[facefirst]

OK this might be me being extremely dense but can you just add cores within a wire together to create something with a higher gauge? For example, if you want to get to a wire with 10 AWG, could you just use both cores within a 20 AWG speaker cable together (just a hypotherical, I have no idea how gauge scales)?

Sorry if this has been done to death.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Double wires decreases gage by 3. Two 16s become a 13 gage. Yes you can do that. However it might mess with capacitance and inductance for some purposes.

 

[facefirst]

Double wires decreases gage by 3. Two 16s become a 13 gage. Yes you can do that. However it might mess with capacitance and inductance for some purposes.

Thank you. The thinking is that if you had a cable with four cores within it, you could paired them up to make a thicker gauge speaker cable and it might be cheaper than trying to get a twin-core cable of the same gauge. Does that make any sense?

 

[Blumlein 88]

Thank you. The thinking is that if you had a cable with four cores within it, you could paired them up to make a thicker gauge speaker cable and it might be cheaper than trying to get a twin-core cable of the same gauge. Does that make any sense?

Yes would work fine.

 

[HorizonsEdge]

Might work. Might introduce unplanned consequences. Seems like a lot of work to avoid some cheap amazon OFC.

 

[Jim Matthews]

More smaller cores = decreased skin effect.

In practice it means stiffer, bulkier wire.

https://www.belden.com/blogs/broadcast/understanding-skin-effect-and-frequency/

 

[mhardy6647]

Thank you. The thinking is that if you had a cable with four cores within it, you could paired them up to make a thicker gauge speaker cable and it might be cheaper than trying to get a twin-core cable of the same gauge. Does that make any sense?

Folks do this all of the time, e.g., with Canare 4S11 or 4S8 speaker cable. I have some 4S8 cables so wired, FWIW.
It works, not sure what else I can say about it.

DSC_4218 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

One may - barely - see it installed on the SE 2A3 amplifier in the photo above, complete with a pair of the free trial version of Mad Scientist Audio "Black Discus"...umm... thingies.

https://www.madscientist-audio.com/blackdiscus.html

We are absolutely sure that these magical devices work. How can we be so sure? Because we blind test them, both against dummy devices, and against earlier versions (to be sure that the newer one is actually an improvement). We recommend that you try blind testing them as well. This page explains how.

You're welcome.

EDIT: aww, shucks, the "blind testing explanation" page link is broken. I was so looking forward to reading it!

 

[DVDdoug]

Here is a Wire Gauge Chart with Ohms per 1000 feet, etc.

I case you don't know this already, two equal resistances in parallel is half the resistance of one.

 

[DonH56]

Putting wires in parallel decreases the resistance and inductance, and increases capacitance. For speakers all we usually care about is the resistance.

For N resistors (wires) in parallel, Rtotal = 1 / (1/R1 + 1/R2 + ... + 1/RN). For two equal resistors (R) then Rtotal = R/2.

Wire gauge table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge -- you can skip the formulae and just look at the tables.

HTH - Don

 

[GeorgeBynum]

Resistors in parallel; @DonH56, you are correct. You can solve for 2 resistors and determine parallel of 2 is (r1*r2)/(r1+r2) (commonly said as product over sum). I find that easier. Even with 3, I'll often solve for a pair then the result with the 3rd.

 

[mansr]

Resistors in parallel; @DonH56, you are correct. You can solve for 2 resistors and determine parallel of 2 is (r1*r2)/(r1+r2) (commonly said as product over sum). I find that easier. Even with 3, I'll often solve for a pair then the result with the 3rd.

Easier to sum the reciprocals.

 

[GeorgeBynum]

Easier to sum the reciprocals.

yes, sum the conductance values then take the reciprocal of that conductance for resistance.

As I said, that is not what I find easier, but if it is for you, great. Both are equivalent and exact.

That's unlike my method of conductor resistance calculations which _ASSUMES_ AWG#10 is 1 ohm/1000 and every 3 sizes makes a factor of 2 change. These conversions are approximate.

But I'm a little different; my methods of Fahrenheit/Celsius conversion are
F=(C+40)*9/5 -40
C=(F+40)*5/9 -40

 

[Koeitje]

Wire gauges are such a stupid way to show the thickness of a cable, just use mm2....