mandym wrote:Ever since I was a young lad building my Dynakits and Heathkits, I have always been warned by the manuals to keep left and right channel signal wires separate and if they have to cross, make them do so at right angles to each other. This is supposed to minimize channel crosstalk. Since all the manuals specify this, I figured it is very important so I followed them religiously. Maybe to this day, it is still being specified and followed by builders.
Fine BUT, something has been bugging me for a long time. What about the tonearm wires? The left and right channel wires run neck and neck for 8 inches or more, bundled together inside the tonearm!
Which brings me to three questions
A) Is the wiring caveat overstated?
B) Will maintaining max separation between the tonearm wires result in a better sounding tonearm?
C) Am I missing something?
Mandym
Hello Mandy,
Not to sound too techie here (because I am not!) but here's a nice comment that I read before regarding the subject matter...
If you are not hearing a hum, then you are not getting any crosstalk. The only magnetic field susceptability to really worry about is from speaker cables and power cords to unshielded IC's.
The way I interpret this in simple terms is that it is not necessary to worry about crosstalk between two adjacent, wrapped, bundled, or parallel wires if you cannot hear it. It is only necessary to worry about this if the wires will be place close or near high current carrying wires like PC and speaker cables.
It is also useful to remember that crosstalk decreases as a function of the square of the distance of the cable. Mind you, twisting the cable as X per foot does not really increases the crosstalk numbers (decreases the susceptibility of the cables to far-field signals or cancelling) but generally averaging. Averaging the maxima/minima of the field intensity along the length of the cable so that a point at any given distance from the center is theoretically equal in field strength thus, minimizing field imbalance.
I also read that if crosstalk is already an issue, separating the two cable conductor by close to an inch will increase the figure from 35 dB to 100 dB. But if that is not practical, it is better to have the conductors (phono signal for example) to have a side-by-side wiring configuration( + wires across from each other).
hope this helps.....