speaker wire

[biglaz]

Are there any advantages or disadvantages to running several separate speaker cables in there separate jackets just tied together at the ends?

[tube fanatic]

Unless you are talking about extremely thin wire, like a #22 or 24, and have a long run, there's no advantage at all. How far from your amp are the speakers? If less than 15-20 feet, some #16 lamp cord is all you need.

[Groomlakearea51]

As Tube fanatic said. There is a point of no real return on gauge size, and at some point, the resistance of larger (or multiple) wires will degrade the frequency response that the wire is supposed to pass. Whic is why good speaker wire has a high strand count for the overall gauge.

[biglaz]

Thanks. That is what I thought.

[T.H.E. Droid]

As Tube fanatic said. There is a point of no real return on gauge size, and at some point, the resistance of larger (or multiple) wires will degrade the frequency response that the wire is supposed to pass. Whic is why good speaker wire has a high strand count for the overall gauge.

Resistance goes down with wire size increase, not up. Good speaker cables have higher strand counts to make them more flexible, resulting in a cable that lies well and doesn't have that cheap, kinky look of zip cord. There's no relectrical eason why you can't use solid strand Romex, which I have used on occasions in the past where there were long runs of cables in protected plenums, and the cable didn't have to flex past initial placement.

Using reasonable sized speaker wire insures that your cable resistance is low enough that it doesn't affect the damping of the system or create loss in the cables. Remember, cable resistance in the circuit creates a voltage drop (and dissapates energy) that would otherwise be used to drive your speakers. Some people fail to read the "reasonable" part of the sentence though, and spend big money for snake oil products that don't produce any measurable benefit.

Running multiple cables in parallel also decreases total resistance but you can get the same decrease by going to larger gauge wire, without the complications of bundling multiple cables together.

[biglaz]

Thanks for the info.