Can anybody think of a reason why this wouldn't work?

[CarlSeibert]

Apropos of nothing in particular, I was looking at speaker cables on Blue Jeans Cables. They have a four-conductor cable that's more or less a big-ass star quad mic cable. People apparently use it for bi-wiring in a single cable. It's so cheap they practically pay you to take it away.

 

I need a short run of cable to go from the speaker outputs of a little tube amp to a powered subwoofer in my den. It's one of those deals where there's a speaker-level input and a crossover so you can high-pass the output of your amp to the main speakers if you want. I don't have speakers connected there. I just use it to drive the sub. I don't know the z-in, so I don't know how much current would flow in this cable run. Not much, I suspect. The channels are summed at the sub, but in what fashion, I don't know.

 

So, the question is: could I run both channels in a single four-conductor cable without them interfering with each other, giving that only the sum of the low frequencies from the channels counts? If so, it would save a tangle of cabling. If the star-quad-i-ness of the thing actually accomplished something in the way of causing or accepting less interference with the other cables in the rats' nest, that would be cool too.

 

 

 

 

[dsavitsk]

Interference here would mean crosstalk, and since you are summing them, you are causing 100% crosstalk anyway. I think you are fine.

 

And, if there is nothing inside the subwoofer to dissipate a bunch of heat, then the Zin is likely high. You can most likely resistance measure across the input to find this out.

[Tyll Hertsens]

Not that it lends anything to his credibility, but I agree with Doug. You're good to go, Carl.

[CarlSeibert]

It's what I think, too. But Doug's opinion is an order of magnitude more likely to be right than mine. I'll order a supply of cable and a fistfull of bananas henceforth.