Speaker Wire

[jjohn]

I'm shopping for speaker wire for my home system and noticed the HUGE prices for so called premium stuff. Being sceptical I did some online research.
Wikipedia has reference to some great articles.
It turns out ALL speaker wire is made of the same purity 99.9%, which means they are ALL oxygen free 99.9%.
The gauge or strands within the cover does matter if you are doing longer runs.
There is a table available to tell you which gauge or AWG wire is required for which application.
In basic terms 16g or 16AWG wire is good for a 15m at 8 Ohms.

I didn't quote anything here in case of copyright.

 

[raywise]

Premium wire, not worth it if you ask me. I bought a 100mtr roll of 14AWG from Ebay, used it to run speakers out to the shed, wiring in the caravan for 12v accessories, lots of things. Works well.

 

[KraftyPg]

Open a set of $500 brand name stereo speakers and have a look at the wire they use internally then compare that to the "premium wire" stores tell you that you can't do with out for quality sound.

 

[rabbit-chop]

Unless you're running $100k speakers, just get the appropriate guage wire from jaycar.

 

[grasshopper]

True that comment above

 

[Old.Tony]

Speakers don't run high voltage and generally don't run high current either. With low power applications, even smaller gauge wires can handle the load. With finer stuff over a longer run you'll see some deterioration in volume but it won't be major.

If you want a long run with no deterioration, go optic fibre. The only problem I have with optic fibre sound is the delay - even with a short run, the time taken to convert the signal creates enough lag that when used for a video, you can see the lip sync is out. Might have been the home theatre system (Kenwood) - but it went away when I changed to normal wire (and bloody thin wire it was).

 

[jjohn]

They're making more Money out of the hype than the product.

 

[KraftyPg]

Now that sounds unlikely in this day and age.

A thread discussing hyped up products would be the largest thread on the forum before midnight

 

[siringo]

You need something with a large diameter, that will give you good connectivity through to your drivers, it's not alot different to running a second battery, you need to reduce the loss from the amp to the driver (speaker).

Honestly, I wouldn't spend much on speaker cable never have.

If you have a sound proof room, top quality drivers, no interuptions whilst listening and remain sober through the entire experience, I can't see the point in spending mega bucks on top quality hi fi gear, never have.

I once designed a 100W 0.0x% loss amp, being an electronics engineer in an earlier life, never built it, I couldn't see the point, coz there was always background hum coming from the rest of the world.

All that top notch hi fi gear is a wank if you ask me.

Along with the CD is better than vinyl, better than laserdisc crap. Now they reckon vinyl is better than CD..... wankers.