Specifications

6
COMMENTS ON CABLES
Surprisingly, some expensive interconnects are poorly designed in that they lack shielding. Avoid these as
they often cause buzzing sounds or even allow radio stations to be produced through your speakers. Properly
shielded interconnects will have an outer covering made of fine braided wire that forms a metal shield around
the wire(s) inside the shield. This is known as coaxial wire. Always used shielded interconnects.
Some speaker cable has very high capacitance and can cause high-quality, wide-bandwidth amplifiers to
oscillate at very high frequencies. You cannot hear this oscillation as it is supersonic, but it will cause the
amplifier to operate at full-power and can overheat and damage both the amplifier and the speakers. If you
notice that one or both channels of any amplifier is running much hotter than normal, suspect a supersonic
oscillation.
One brand of cable is notorious for causing this problem and that is Goertz (Alpha core) cable. It is built as
two thin ribbons sandwiched together, one on top of the other. Do not use this brand or type of cable on
wide-bandwidth solid-state amplifiers (these are amplifiers that are capable of linear high frequency response
to 100 KHz or beyond). You may use it on tube amplifiers because they have much more limited bandwidth
and cannot reproduce the high frequencies where the oscillation occurs. But because electrostatic speakers
are capacitors, it is best to avoid all high capacitance cables as this just taxes your amplifier more.
Speaker cables exert most of their influence on the sound of speakers by interacting with passive, high-level
crossovers present in most speaker systems to change the frequency response of the speaker. B ecause
Sanders Sound Systems speakers do not have passive crossovers, cables will have little if any effect. The
only basic requirement for the woofer cables is that they be large — at least 14 gauge, so that the amplifiers
will not be isolated from their drivers by excessive impedance.
Electrostatic speakers will operate best with cables that have extremely low inductance, moderately low
capacitance, and moderately high impedance. Sanders Sound Systems manufactures cables that are ideal for
this purpose, but most other cables will be satisfactory as l ong as their inductance is very low (excessive
inductance will adversely affect the high frequency response of the speakers). You can find a d etailed
discussion of this on the "Cable White Paper" found on the website www.sanderssoundsystems.com.
Each speaker has an internal POWER SUPPLY to energize the electrostatic panels. T his is why each
speaker must be plugged into the mains. You may use the supplied 10-foot power cord, or the any special
power cord you prefer. Note that since the power supply is not involved in any audio circuits, there is no
reason to believe that using a special cord or power conditioner would have any effect on the sound.
COMMENTS ON AMPLIFIER POWER
What good does it do t o have a wonderfully designed amplifier if it is usually overloaded and full of
distortion? Power is the most important amplifier specification. While most of the power is required in the
bass (which is why the included bass amplifier is very powerful), the electrostatic element requires a
surprisingly large power amplifier at high frequencies because the impedance drops to 2 ohms. Therefore, it is
best to drive it with at least a 60 watt/channel tube amplifier or a 250 watt/channel solid state amplifier.
Low-power amplifiers will work, but they will cause distortion if you play them loudly on dynamic material.
They may not sound obviously distorted, but they may sound “strained”, “harsh”, lack detail and dynamics, or
have other audible flaws. Sanders Sound Systems strongly recommends very powerful amplifiers.