I'm the US Distributor for Decorp Flatwire. Please don't confuse with other flat wires on the market. They just don't compare to our product. We are looking to set up our distribution chains for flatwire. Please respond and let me know where you buy your AV Supplies. Our electrical wire has been UL listed and we are waiting for the final written to start producing. 90% of the remaing products should start shipping and be available by the end of the year at the latest.

They include 12, 14 and 18 guage speaker lines and accessories.

Line level for subwoofer and low voltage applications such as a screen trigger.

Video lines include Component, SVHS, Composite and Coaxial.

We are going to produce Cat-6 to start and it's specked to 1 gig per pair.

Please ask any questions you want and I will rerpond with the answer.

Ken Login
Flat wire Solutions
2335 Hillstone Ave
Henderson, NV 89052

That's weird huh guys? I mentioned this stuff just yesterday. whoa...

Ken,

It would be more helpful to give us some real data. There are so many cable companies out there selling snake oil. I've been to your website and find real data to be lacking there as well.

It looks like your products aimed at 75ohm characteristic impedance are based on design of a stripline. This is good news as your cables should present a good impedance match. I would think the real "trick" will be keeping the 75ohm impedance constant over the transition from flatwire to connector! How about showing us some data. Screen shots of your product and a well manufactured component video cable, both attached to a Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) would be definitive proof of your products ability.

Seems like if your products are really good, you'll want to do this. Then again... if the connector designs are not very good, and don't really pass the above tests... you won't want to show us the data. So, if I don't see the data, I know what conclusion I'll come to.

By the way, I'm in the market to use a product such as yours in the next month or so. As a result I'd like to see these results before I were to buy.

In addition, Is there a reason you don't promote your product for use under carpet? This seems like a natural application. Is the abrasion resistance or some other aspect not acceptable to meet UL standards if used under carpet?

This message was edited by bcf1963 on 10/12/04 10:59 ET.

The first paragraph of the home page of their product says for under rugs and carpets...

Mark

Oops, not the home page:
[Link: decorp.com] is where it is...

.Ken - Is there a reason you don't mention 16awg speaker wire? That's pretty important stuff. In fact we never use 18awg for speaker lines. (even though many people do) I'd say 80% of out installs are 16awg and the rest of them 14 and 12awg. Generally in the theater and what not with the lower gauge.

I'm guessing it would be another expense for the product launch that you don't need at this time, and I know we could just use 16 to 14... right?

When the money starts to come in, I'd seriously look at adding the 16awg to the lineup. I hope it goes very well for you. I'm assuming you'll be at the CEDIA show in September? We all have to plan early and stay late.

Good luck to you. It should do well for you

Jay I'm going to start a new thread, which will invite everyone to email me directly and recieve the engineering white pages.

Our 18 guage speaker cable has a skin guage equivelent of 5 guage cable. Most signal through speaker cable travels on the outside of the cable. Our 18 guage cable will out perform any 16 guage standed speaker cable available on the market. Look for the white pages.

Can it be terminated in the field yet? I have a job that is screaming for this stuff but without field termination or custom lengths, I can't use it....Is the tool done?

It can be terminated in the field - in fact, all of the flat speaker wire products, (various lengths of 12/14/18 gauge wire), do not come preterminated. You would purchase the wire and connectors, which includes templates to help you terminate. The only extra equipment necessary is scissors. The whole process is short and sweet.

Well, now you have definitely stepped in it.

It has been years, but when Monster Cable was spinning their initial myths, I looked into this and found that while skin effect is real, its influence at audio frequencies is totally negligible. To me, it is a mark of unsubstantiated hype that a manufacturer claims to have skin effect advantages at audio frequencies.

And your lack of technical documentation on the site undermines your credibility, especially as you make more specific technical claims.




And what the heck is this? Are you saying that your 18 gauge cable has lower resistance than ANYBODY'S 16 gauge wire? How does it do this with a smaller cross section (gauge is defined by cross section). I can see that a flat wire with space between the conductors can have less induction from one connector to another, but even Monster has not claimed that separating the conductors would improve the performance...and they are the MASTERS of hype!

Ernie,

Ken sent me copies of their white papers. Although I applaud them for a scientific look at the details, I think they miss the important points as I'll discuss below.

In general they do a nice job of discussing skin effect, and even compute the skin effect at 20KHz, then they make the jump and compute the impedance of the cable based only on the conductivity of the skin effect area of the cable. This is an issue, because even if skin effect is an issue, skin depth still has about 70% of the signal not flowing in the skin, so this makes round cable look excessively bad and their cable look good at audio frequencies.

They also compare their cable to a single conductor round wire. This is another bad comparison. None of us use a single conductor cable, as the flexibility is not acceptable. If you take multiple conductors into account with the skin depth, their cable is no better than a cable of a moderate number of round conductors.

They also tend to forget about low frequencies. Their 18 gauge cable will perform like round 18 gauge at low frequencies. In my mind the worst gauge equivalent of the cable in the frequency range of interest is the determining factor. Their 18ga flat wire will perform equivalent to 18ga moderately stranded round wire at low audio frequencies.

The other issue they totally ignore in their white papers is the impedance of their connectors and connector system. Looking at the pictures on their website, I don't see how they are going to get good contact from the flat conductors to banana plugs, RCA's etc. Looks like they are relying on flat spring contacts over a fairly large area. The fact that the conductors are unprotected copper, means they will oxidize fairly rapidly, and even if the connection is good at first, I don't think they will create a good long term connection. Crimp connectors work well on round cable even with no solder, because the force is great enough to implement a gas tight seal, resulting in the copper not oxidizing. This seems to be missing from the DeCorp system.

Lastly when the 75ohm characteristic cables are discussed, they don't do anything to show that their cables exhibit 75 ohms over the frequencies of interest. They also do not address how they keep the 75 ohm impedance during the transition from flat wire to connector. From the pictures on their site, I think the connectors and lack of shielding are going to be the weakness in their component video, and RF flat wire solutions. If they want to show their cables at 75 ohms, they should show a dB loss per foot as a function of frequency, as well as a capture of a screen shot of a test of their cable and connectors on a Time Domain Reflectomer (TDR) showing the impedance not only of their cable, but connectors as well.

Pardon me, I have to take a moment to bludgeon the sensors on my BS Detector. They are screaming so loudly that I have to silence them just to respond.


In other words, their claim is crap. Are they comparing their wire with round cable that has some thirty or more conductors, each with its own skin? Read on; they do not.


In other words, their comparison is crap.


Did I already say that their comparison is crap?


They sure DO forget about low frequencies. Like, say 1000 Hz!

If they are talking about skin effect at 20 kHz, which NONE of us (except my poodle) can hear, then their comparison is crap. In many cases of physical properties, effects change on the order of three to six dB per octave; let's be charitable and say the effect lessens at three dB per octave. That means that the skin effect will have about 14 dB less effect at 1 kHz than it does at 20 kHz (and 28 dB less of an effect if it is 6 dB/octave). Now, just how massively impressive is the advantage given by skin effect with their wire, that 14 to 28 dB LESS of an effect in the middle of the audible range is worth even thinking about?


Ken said: "Our 18 guage cable will out perform any 16 guage standed speaker cable available on the market."

Ken, that is gauge, not guage.
bcf, Ken does not say it performs equivalent(ly) to 18 ga; he said it outperforms 16 gauge. He does not even limit the frequencies at which he claims it will do so.

Wait: maybe this claim is crap.

Ken also says "Look for the white pages." He means white papers.


So maybe, like I said, their claim is crap.


They can't do that because their claims are crap.

So how come nobody has climbed all over Ken for posting a clear and obivous advertisement here? I have seen other threads where every response addressed that fact (notably one for satellite installations), but nobody seems to have even noticed! Do we need this product so bad that we won't ask him to buy an ad on the site and otherwise quit pushing his stuff in a thread?

Ernie,

I didn't scream because I wanted people to make up their own minds about the product. Just wanted to make sure that people were armed with the "full truth" not a "marketing version of the truth."

My profession is electrical engineering, so reading those white papers was entertaining... my wife's remark was "What are you reading, Dilbert?" I found it entertaining how well the white papers were written to stress the positive aspects of their products while totally ignoring the negative aspects.

I suggest that people who want a lesson in how to write an ad for your product that uses physics and electromagnetic theory to obfiscate the truth, contact Ken for your copy of the white papers!