Out of interest what differentiates speaker cable with any other copper cable? Is there any reason you could just use say spare electrical cable which should be plenty thick enough?

If you are considering spending money on premium speaker cable:

https://www.quora.com/Are-premium-speaker-cables-a-ripoff

I was always told that the most important thing is to match the lengths so both speakers present the same load to the amp.

Zeon:

 

Out of interest what differentiates speaker cable with any other copper cable?

 

Just that I'm using it for speakers :-)

 

Is there any reason you could just use say spare electrical cable which should be plenty thick enough?

 

I don't have spare cable of any type to use :-)

... but probably not the place for a speaker cable debate, or we'll be lost in a world of snake oil and I still won't get round to installing these speakers ;-)

pbolger:

 

I was always told that the most important thing is to match the lengths so both speakers present the same load to the amp.

 

I recall being told the same thing last century (the 1990s!) - but there are now lots of people that also argue this is a have, given the relatively short distances the signal is travelling, eg:

 

5 Myths About Speaker Wire

 

Speaker wires should be the same length: It seems to make sense that speaker wires should be identical to eliminate phase shifts. But electrical signals travel through speaker wire at near the speed of light. It would take miles of speaker wire to hear any difference. So having wires a foot or two (or 10) different is irrelevant.

https://www.machinedesign.com/community/editorial-comment/article/21832227/5-myths-about-speaker-wire

 

I recall being told the same thing last century (the 1990s!) - but there are now lots of people that also argue this is a have, given the relatively short distances the signal is travelling, eg:

 

Obviously the idea that a couple of extra metres of cable will result in a phase shift is just silly, but there is an argument that having more cable to drive on one channel will affect the performance of the amplifier as the resistance would be different.

See this article for some insight.

The cheapest decent speaker cable may well be a couple of premade 15amp extension cords with the plugs chopped off.

Table 5.5 - Resistance per metre of copper conductors at 20°C for

Conductor cross-sectional area      Resistance per metre run

(mm²)                                               (m ohms / m)

1.0                                                         18.1

1.5                                                         12.10

2.5                                                         7.41

4.0                                                         4.61

6.0                                                         3.08

10.0                                                       1.83

16.0                                                       1.15

25.0                                                      0.727

that's in mili ohms, would need about 55m of 1.0mm2 cable to make an ohm of difference

I do. Never used still coiled up not sure of length I'll check shortly.

Where are you?

Where are you?

Kopkiwi:

 

Where are you?

 

The cable is packed inside a banana box in my lounge but finding it may take a while - mainly due to the ~15 other banana boxes also in my lounge.

We moved house recently :P

Zeon:

Out of interest what differentiates speaker cable with any other copper cable?

Kopkiwi:

 

Where are you?

 

I'm in Nelson.

mgeek:

 

Kopkiwi:

 

Where are you?

 

 

I'm in Nelson.

 

Bugger, am in Christchurch. I THINK I have a couple hundred meters of 12AWG sitting around doing nothing somewhere.

its rear speakers . Rears are often cheapies and mainly playing sound effects : boom crash bangs , no need for high quality.

What he should be spending money on is audio quality fuses. A mere $500+
:-)

16 gauge wire without aluminium wrapped through the copper to drop its manufacturing costs is all you'll need.

14 gauge is nice, but a lot of cheaper speakers can't actually fit it in their terminals.

Remember, don't terminate the cable over the top of your amplifier, the copper has a habit of falling in and shorting the amp.

Remember not to leave spare strands sticking out of the terminals - you only need to strip the cable back 8mm.