Iconoclast Series-2 Speaker Cable Design Memo Galen Gareis, May 15, 2023 BACKGROUND: I improved the series II RCA and XLR by realizing that the SIGNAL wire needs special parameters that I isolated in several listening tests early on. Both properties are connected; -Wire coherence improvements. Same, or near the same current through the wire cross-section based on wire size getting smaller… Continue Reading
Parallel Speaker Cable Wiring Analysis Galen Gareis, August 11, 2022May 15, 2023 Blue Jeans constantly tries to drive down the cost of our hobby, and of course we do that with our wire products. The 1310A is a stepping stone to more complex and expensive designs, called ICONOCLAST(TM). Four separate and different cable examples demonstrate how parallel cable halves L and R… Continue Reading
Shields and Grounding Galen Gareis, April 17, 2020August 4, 2020 BACKGROUND: There is always discussion on how to ground a shield. The answer lies in what the worst-case noise situation is. It isn’t always the same answer. Do you leave one end open or ground both ends? If you ground only one ends, which end? We can look at how… Continue Reading
BAV Cable — Design Notes Galen Gareis, January 30, 2020 (This article consists primarily of a technical piece by Galen Gareis, supplemented by some paragraphs by Kurt Denke, as noted herein by the initials “KD”) BACKGROUND: The development of the ultra-low R, L and C ICONOCLAST™ home studio XLR cables exceeded design expectations and performance numbers reached. The patented use… Continue Reading
Speaker Cable Design Brief Galen Gareis, January 29, 2020May 15, 2023 Speaker cables are a very different animal than high input impedance interconnecting cables. A speaker cable connects to an extremely inconsistent 2-32 ohm (or even lower and higher!) reactive load created by the speaker. RCA and XLR interconnect cables see a much more consistent and resistive high impedance load making… Continue Reading
XLR SHORT REACH ORIENTATION Galen Gareis, November 11, 2019May 15, 2023 I have four 1 meter XLR sets going from the bottom component, up to the pre amplifier component. The natural LOOP needs to be allowed to form, unobstructed from the rear wall. This takes about 12″-13″ of clearance from the back of the unit to the wall. The rack may… Continue Reading
Iconoclast Gen2 interconnect update Galen Gareis, August 23, 2019 NOTE: This paper was originally written prior to the introduction of Iconoclast Gen2 interconnects, so while some references are to the future, that future is now…. BACKGROUND: To possibly improve the performance of the XLR, to maybe achieve even lower L and C, we would need to revise the current… Continue Reading
XLR Design Brief Galen Gareis, August 22, 2019May 15, 2023 1.0 Conductors 1.1 Copper Size2.0 Dielectric Materials3.0 Dielectric geometry4.0 Shield Material and design considerations5.0 Jacket design and material considerations 1.0 Conductors. Copper Size. BOTH of the copper conductor and size considerations were answered when we started the RCA cable. We don’t want to change the current coherence with a differing… Continue Reading
RCA Design Brief Galen Gareis, August 22, 2019May 15, 2023 In a previous paper I covered several issues that create signal distortion in audio cables. The most demanding variables involve the TIME related distortions that the ear is most sensitive to. Consideration must be made during cable design to mitigate the TIME based issues through the audio band. The following… Continue Reading
TIME… Galen Gareis, August 22, 2019 If you have spent plenty on cables you may well wonder WHY these cables are physically as they are. If care is taken to adhere to fundamentals, there are very good reasons for a physical design in audio cable, of both high (interconnect) and low (speaker) input impedance types. If… Continue Reading