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Speaker Wire Gauge Recommendation


YK Thom

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Well we are in the new condo for a couple weeks as I've mentioned in another thread. Thus far whilst we wait for the new AV unit that my friend is building for us We have been using the old unit with just a 2.1 set up. The new unit should be ready this weekend and my father is flying up from Ontario in two weeks. Time to get things set up. I got rid of most of my old wire when we moved. Question is, gauge.

Should I be looking at 12 all around or would 14 suffice?

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four wire 16 gage inwall cable will serve you well, wire it as a star quad that means you use two wires positive and two wires negative. The configuration of the wires in the four wire twist will be positive negative positive and negative so the polarities alternate all the way around the four wire twist. This guarantees you the highest possible cancellation of common mode noise (any radiated noise which is induced to both positive and negative legs equally or more simply noise picked up by the cable) and results in the absolute and most quiet lowest noise cable configuration possible. Buy an oxygen free in wall cable used for multi room installs which is standard with PVC wire insulation and outer jacket also of PVC. This is the very best bang for your dollar and results in the equivalent of a fourteen gage cable that has a current capacity of a minimum of fifteen amps which is far more than you will require. Best regards Moray James.

Edited by moray james
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four wire 16 gage inwall cable will serve you well, wire it as a star quad

 

http://www.audioquest.com/star-quad-speaker-cables/type-2

+++

 

I use the Monoprice 12g, good stuff.  Don't use their banana plugs, they have screw-in tips which constantly come loose.

 

These Knukonceptz.com cables have been highly recommended by others as good wires, decent price.

 

http://www.knukonceptz.com/home-theater/speaker-wire/karma-ss-speaker-kable/

KAR124SS.jpg

 

 

http://www.knukonceptz.com/home-theater/speaker-wire/kl3-kable/

KL3-10_325w.JPG

Edited by wvu80
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four wire 16 gage inwall cable will serve you well, wire it as a star quad

 

http://www.audioquest.com/star-quad-speaker-cables/type-2

+++

 

I use the Monoprice 12g, good stuff.  Don't use their banana plugs, they have screw-in tips which constantly come loose.

 

These Knukonceptz.com cables have been highly recommended by others as good wires, decent price.

 

http://www.knukonceptz.com/home-theater/speaker-wire/karma-ss-speaker-kable/

KAR124SS.jpg

 

 

http://www.knukonceptz.com/home-theater/speaker-wire/kl3-kable/

KL3-10_325w.JPG

 

Knukonceptz are my guys, you go with them one time and you are spoiled for life. Quality American Goods.

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Generally speaking power amp/receiver outputs are not impedance balanced and speakers are not balanced inputs. Treating your speaker wire like a balanced line will do nothing. Heck why don't we shield it also?

But that 4 conductor Knukonceptz sure do look nice.

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I have never used the 4-16 type wire. Are you then combining two negatives with two positives at the connection point in the receiver? I'm going to assume a banana plug would be needed to hold it all together?

the two negative connect together at each end as do the positive. So you are making one conductor out of two wires for each leg of the cable. It is the alternating polarity of the four wires that makes for the significant noise reduction of a star quad cable. No other cable configuration provides as much noise reduction as a star quad. You could use a shield tied only at the amplifier end but it won't sound as good don't ask me why it just does not. You only uses a shield when it is necessary. A 16 gage wire is a good compromise for size it makes for a good balance of frequencies remember high requencies travel on the skin ands bass frequencies travel in the wire. At very high RF and low gigahertz frequencies much of the signal actually travels on the inside surface of the wires insulation rather than the copper, this is where you start to get into wave guides.

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 A 16 gage wire is a good compromise for size it makes for a good balance of frequencies remember high frequencies travel on the skin ands bass frequencies travel in the wire.

 

If this partly in answer to my earlier question of why 16 AWG would sound better than 14 or 14 AWG, I disagree.

 

For cooper, skin depth at 10 KHz is about 0.65 mm which is the radius of 16 AWG.  Are you trying to match them?

At audio frequencies, pretty much all of the wire is used even at 12 AWG with a radius of 1 mm.  The 12 AWG still has the advantage of a much larger cross-scetional area covered by skin depth (and there's still current deeper than skin depth).

Edited by psg
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I agree with psg. 16 or 14 gauge might be "adequate", but we're here because we want better than that. 12AWG cable will sound noticeably better than 16 gauge.

As well, the larger lower-resistance cables allow the amp to better control the drivers, because they have less effect on the damping factor.

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