speaker wire question

[colterphoto1]

is all this testing being done with TUNER input? Are you in a particularly bad fringe area or have receivers that might not have the best FM specs?

I still think it needs more Yak hair.

[Arky]

So my friend came over today with his AVR-1906 and plugged my speakers into it. The hissing noise that came from his at volume 0 (scale of -70 to 18) was equivillant to that which was produced at -70 on mine. However, when we hooked up all the speakers to my normal setup (which has speaker wires running along power cords, computer cords, etc), we did notice an exceptional amount of fuzz when the volume was at -20 or so, which led him to him telling me to buy better shielded speaker cables.

Right now, I'm almost definitely using the bottom of the line (some fourteen gauge from WalMart). What kind of wire should I buy that will be shielded from interference of all the other cords running by them?

Can you isolate your cables/cords better? Buy some flex wrap type stuff.

[DrWho]

So my friend came over today with his AVR-1906 and plugged my speakers into it. The hissing noise that came from his at volume 0 (scale of -70 to 18) was equivillant to that which was produced at -70 on mine. However, when we hooked up all the speakers to my normal setup (which has speaker wires running along power cords, computer cords, etc), we did notice an exceptional amount of fuzz when the volume was at -20 or so, which led him to him telling me to buy better shielded speaker cables.

Right now, I'm almost definitely using the bottom of the line (some fourteen gauge from WalMart). What kind of wire should I buy that will be shielded from interference of all the other cords running by them?

Maybe you missed the point earlier...your speaker wires cannot be picking up EMI and introducing it into the signal of the speakers. To verify for yourself, simply unplug the speaker wire from the receiver (but leave it plugged into the speakers). If you don't hear any noise, then there is no EMI. There is simply no such thing as a "shielded speaker cable".

What are you using as a source when doing this testing? And what mode and settings are you running?

[banasikdrummer]

Maybe you missed the point earlier...your speaker wires cannot be picking up EMI and introducing it into the signal of the speakers. To verify for yourself, simply unplug the speaker wire from the receiver (but leave it plugged into the speakers). If you don't hear any noise, then there is no EMI. There is simply no such thing as a "shielded speaker cable".

What are you using as a source when doing this testing? And what mode and settings are you running?

My source in my "testing" is from my computer (computer's digital out to receiver's coax-in). Now, I know that there's a chance that this is just a given in the world of high efficiency speakers, as someone pointed out before, but I just thought about that Emotiva guy again, and his crappy RCA cables. The RCA cable I'm using to hook my computer to the receiver is a six foot long audio/video cable (yellow, white, and red hook ups) in which I'm just using red-to-red. Would I benefit at all from going out and buying a nicer RCA cable possibly?

And who knows, the problem could be the recordings of the songs I'm listening to, because some definitely play hell with my tweeters more than others...

[tenzip]

Crappy cable guy here again. []

OK, unplug your RCA cable from the coax input on the back of the receiver. The ONLY things plugged into the back of the receiver are the cables going to each speaker, and the power cord. That's it, nothing else, no inputs at all. Do you still have the hiss?

If you do, then it's the receiver. If not, then it's your source or interconnects.

If the above test leads you to suspect the interconnect, get on the computer and look up BlueJeans cables or monoprice.com. I bought from monoprice, very happy with their stuff and the price.

Or, stop by BB or CC and get a Monster or whatever.

[banasikdrummer]

Crappy cable guy here again. []

OK, unplug your RCA cable from the coax input on the back of the receiver. The ONLY things plugged into the back of the receiver are the cables going to each speaker, and the power cord. That's it, nothing else, no inputs at all. Do you still have the hiss?

If you do, then it's the receiver. If not, then it's your source or interconnects.

I probably should've thought of the fact that I still had the hiss when I only had speakers plugged in during one of my tests, which meant definitely the receiver. Hopefully when my baby returns from New Jersey, I won't have any problems, and I can enjoy my music the way it was meant to be enjoyed...although I doubt I'll be able to do that the right way until I devote a whole room to my speakers...