Good speaker wire

[BiggerIsBetter]

Any speaker wire will introduce some type of loss. As a result, I stopped using it all together. As a result my system is dead 'quiet.' []

[TBrennan]

Bigger-----Reminds me of a fanatical tweaker named Enid Lumley who wrote in one of those whacko high-end magazines years ago. She came to the conclusion that your hi-fi sounds better if you're not in the room with it. Seriously.

[tofu]

Bigger-----Reminds me of a fanatical tweaker named Enid Lumley who wrote in one of those whacko high-end magazines years ago. She came to the conclusion that your hi-fi sounds better if you're not in the room with it. Seriously.

there was a fellow on these forums who once claimed that certain speaker wire made his speakers sound better through walls than others. and only through walls.

[efzauner]

JBryan

AWG (american wire gauge) is a standard. The smaller the number, the thicker it is, and the lower resistance per unit lenght it has. Therefore, yes, 32 gauge copper wire has much more resistance than 10 gauge. About 162 times more resistance.

You can find an AWG table in many places on the web... here is one http://www.komeil.com/awg.htm Find AWG 32 and it says 162 ohms per Kft or 1000 feet. So divide 162 by 1000 and that gives 0.162 ohms per foot. For a 10 foot cable run, you have 10 feet per conductor, and you have 2 conductors. That makes a total of 20 feet. So 20 x .162 is about 3.24 Ohms. You can figure out the other ones yourself. Keep you speaker wire resistance at less than say, 5% (this number is debatable but a good starting point) of your lowest speaker impedance and you should be fine. For most stereo installations, the speakers are 5-15 feet away, with maybe 20 feet of cable. I find 10 gauge a bit big to work with, I prefer 12. So 20x2x1.69=.067 ohms. That is 1.7% of the resistance of a 4 ohm speaker and you should be fine. Remember that the speaker voice coil is nothing more than a very long copper wire with about 4 or 8 ohms resistance. So adding .1 ohms is not gonna make much difference. The amplifier output also has internal resistance. So keep things in perspective.

Without some basic electrical or electronics knowledge, how do you know that using AWG 32 magnet wire will not harm your system? From an electrical point of view, it will not harm it, but it will sound like crap because of the added resistance. I would also be concerned with the fragility of it. It would be easy to get the conductors caught on a sharp metal edge, scratch of the thin insulation and cause a short. There are good reasons why you don't see this stuff sold for speaker wire. You cannot simply blindly experiment with all sorts of odd configurations. Speaker wire has 3 basic characteristics: resistance, inductance, and capacitance. Blindly play around and you don't know what you will get. There are actually some very high cost exotic speaker wire that have inductance and/or capacitance high enought that it can harm cheap amplifiers.

here is another good speaker wire web site: http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

[JBryan]

Thanks for the explanation - very helpful!

No one really considers themselves ignorant until they know better...

Have fun, Bryan

[CONVERGENCE]

I'm suprised no body mentioned MONSTER CABLE.

Here is a quote from TODD WHITE from Altec Lansing.

Monster Cable is nothing but Litz wire. Litz wire has NEVER been proven, as far as I have ever known, to be superior to properly manufactured high-quality strnaded/twisted pair wire of the same guage. It's all verrrrry subjective - just beware people who try to sell you "special sound wire."

They call it "Litz" wire because it was designed by a German. The actual word is "Litzendraht" which means "woven wire."

Generally defined, it is a wire constructed of individual film insulated wires bunched or braided together in a uniform pattern of twists and length of lay.

The multistrand configuration minimizes the power losses otherwise encountered in a solid conductor due to the "skin effect", or the tendency of radio frequency current to be concentrated at the surface of the conductor.

In order to counteract this effect, it is necessary to increase the amount of surface area without appreciably increasing the size of the conductor. It is also essential to position each individual strand in the Litz construction in a uniform pattern moving from the center to the outside and back in a given length.

Even properly constructed Litz wires will exhibit some skin effect due to the limitations of stranding. Wires intended for higher frequency ranges require more strands of a finer gauge size than Litz wires of equal cross sectional area but composed of fewer and larger strands.

Polyurethane is the film most often used for insulating individual strands because of its low electrical losses and its solderability. Other insulations can also be used. Litz wires are generally further insulated with a single or double wrap or serving, of a textile-typically nylon-but are also available unserved.

The biggest problem with Litz wire for audiophile use is that it doesn't really help in the 20Hz - 20kHz band. What DOES help is the larger gauge...

I don't like solid stranded wire for audio use, as it is easier to break, especially at the terminals, but lots of people do.

I'd just keep what I have, if i were you...

[ June 27, 2004 09:13 PM: Message edited by: Todd W. White

[JeffDurbin]

JBryan

AWG (american wire gauge) is a standard. The smaller the number, the thicker it is, and the lower resistance per unit lenght it has. Therefore, yes, 32 gauge copper wire has much more resistance than 10 gauge. About 162 times more resistance.

You can find an AWG table in many places on the web... here is one http://www.komeil.com/awg.htm Find AWG 32 and it says 162 ohms per Kft or 1000 feet. So divide 162 by 1000 and that gives 0.162 ohms per foot. For a 10 foot cable run, you have 10 feet per conductor, and you have 2 conductors. That makes a total of 20 feet. So 20 x .162 is about 3.24 Ohms. You can figure out the other ones yourself. Keep you speaker wire resistance at less than say, 5% (this number is debatable but a good starting point) of your lowest speaker impedance and you should be fine. For most stereo installations, the speakers are 5-15 feet away, with maybe 20 feet of cable. I find 10 gauge a bit big to work with, I prefer 12. So 20x2x1.69=.067 ohms. That is 1.7% of the resistance of a 4 ohm speaker and you should be fine. Remember that the speaker voice coil is nothing more than a very long copper wire with about 4 or 8 ohms resistance. So adding .1 ohms is not gonna make much difference. The amplifier output also has internal resistance. So keep things in perspective.

Without some basic electrical or electronics knowledge, how do you know that using AWG 32 magnet wire will not harm your system? From an electrical point of view, it will not harm it, but it will sound like crap because of the added resistance. I would also be concerned with the fragility of it. It would be easy to get the conductors caught on a sharp metal edge, scratch of the thin insulation and cause a short. There are good reasons why you don't see this stuff sold for speaker wire. You cannot simply blindly experiment with all sorts of odd configurations. Speaker wire has 3 basic characteristics: resistance, inductance, and capacitance. Blindly play around and you don't know what you will get. There are actually some very high cost exotic speaker wire that have inductance and/or capacitance high enought that it can harm cheap amplifiers.

here is another good speaker wire web site: http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

This weekend, I'm wiring a pair of RCW-5s in my dining room as my Zone 2 speakers. I am using 14 gauge CL3 wire for a run of about 50 - 55 feet. I wanted to go with 12 guage, which is the max the speakers will take, but I didn't see it in the CL3 rating. Since the dining room speakers are just for dinnertime mood music I wasn't too worried about resistance. Do you think I'm OK?

[IB Slammin]

Bigger-----Reminds me of a fanatical tweaker named Enid Lumley who wrote in one of those whacko high-end magazines years ago. She came to the conclusion that your hi-fi sounds better if you're not in the room with it. Seriously.

Tom,

OT, but reminds me of my old "street racing" days. The lighter the car, the better. Get rid of the spare tire, back seat, bumper-jack, etc.

We came to the conclusion that if we were not in the car...............That would be better.[]

Terry

[efzauner]

Jeff, Just use the link I gave to the AWG chart. 14 guage is about 2.5 ohms per 1000 feet. that equals to 1/4 ohm for 50 feet. 12 gauge is about a third less. 14 guage will still be fine for background listening. You are not going to puch more than a watt or so average anyway.... Why could you not find thicker gauge in wall wiring? It is readily available.

[seti]

Bigger-----Reminds me of a

fanatical tweaker named Enid Lumley who wrote in one of those whacko

high-end magazines years ago. She came to the conclusion that your

hi-fi sounds better if you're not in the room with it.

Seriously.

there was a fellow on these forums who once

claimed that certain speaker wire made his speakers sound better

through walls than others. and only through walls.

I can't stop giggling about that omg....

Sounds like too much LDS in the 60's [8-)]

[Ray Garrison]

Compared to Peter Belt, Enid is as logical and pragmatic as Spock. (uh, that's Spock the guy with the pointy ears, not Dr. Spock the baby doctor...)

[D-MAN]

Sam, whatever you get, get the largest diameter that you can.

I would say AWG 8-10 is a safe bet. 12 is the smallest I would go.

DM