What kind of speaker wires do you use ? (1 Viewer)

[Pete Jennings]

Shapely bottle!

 

[Sihan Goi]

You're right, but there are so many happy people in this board with the same speaker cable as me, so at least I'm not alone

 

[Steve Carlo]

So...the consensus is that a decent 12 gauge wire should suffice for most of us who aren't running reference standard set ups who don't have anechoic rooms. But what about the connection to the receiver and speaker?
Twisting the ends, tinning them and using a wrap around and screw down conection
Banana plugs (my local says no way)
Spade plugs

Oh what about solder (sodder - at least that's how it is pronounced for the Americans)? Should I buy some gold? OK I'm being vasicious and I don't think the choice of solder should make a damn bit of difference. But the question about whether I should worry about how my connections are terminated is very real! Previously I had a *low* end Sony receiver that just had clips for the speaker wires, the speakers had banana plugs or wrap around and screw down connections. None of the above would have made a difference in that case

 

[Chu Gai]

Use whatever fits your lifestyle. Bananas on the receiver end can facilitate moving things around while spades on the speaker terminals make for a nice secure connection.

What about solder? Some people just buy connectors that have screws to hold the wire in. Others crimp and others crimp and solder. Myself I favor the last approach but it's really not a big thing.

You should buy gold only if you think the price is going to go up in this economic and political climate. Futures is a great way to do this, and also a great way of making sure you never have enough money to buy a receiver from Walmart

The ONLY time wire is going to matter if you happen to be running extraordinary lengths (maybe 100' or more) or just happen to have a speaker with an impedance drop down to around 1 ohm or so in the high frequencies. Not many of those out there.

 

[Earl Simpson]

I use 12/10 AWG stranded from Home Depot. Comes in 12 colors and in 25 to 1000' rolls.

 

[Ron-P]

I love beer! Oh, I use Monster XP 12g all around.


Peace Out~

 

[Eric Kahn]

I have 14 AWG low voltage lighting wire for my mains and 16 gauge clear zip cord wire for the rest of my speakers and my connects are a hodge podge of cables rangeing from cheap gold plated best buy type RCA cables to the really cheap ones that come with new VCR's and DVD players

the only advantage to gold plating the ends of cables is that gold does not oxidise and cause bad connections, silver is the best conductor, silver oxide is a pretty good conductor (which is why relay points are usually silver coated) copper is the next best conductor, then aluminum, then gold

 

[Chu Gai]

and would you believe there are gold speaker wires out there...calling Donald Trump!

 

[Legairre]

Everytime someone at work says the guy at CC talked them into spending $500.00 on speaker wire, I always ask the same question. What do you really think will make a more noticable diferrence in your system. $500.00 on wire or $500.00 towards better speakers.

For me oxygen free 12ga from parts express works just fine.

 

[Michael R Price]

How about $50 towards speaker wire versus $50 towards speakers? In that case, the decision is a little easier.

 

[Martice]

Everytime someone at work says the guy at CC talked them into spending $500.00 on speaker wire, I always ask the same question. What do you really think will make a more noticable diferrence in your system. $500.00 on wire or $500.00 towards better speakers.

If I had to choose between the speakers and the cables I would choose the speakers. However, if your room, speakers and source player are not setup to perform at their max capability then this may contribute to the lack of ability to hear the subtle differences a cable can make providing the source material is of superior quality.

This is similar to some who claim that they cannot hear any differences between SACD and CD or the differences between the two formats are not that big as people have been saying.

What would be helpful is if anyone asking these questions would list their equipment and listening habits and musical tastes. Also, the person who is answering the question did the same. Supposing if you were taking advice from a person who listens to only terribly recorded music and at high volumes in a room with horrible acoustic problems and you were of the classic jazz variety at low critical volumes. If you knew the above information before the advise was given you would not be wrong if you took that persons advise with a very small grain of salt. The above criterior would help make any recommendations a little more helpful to a person looking for recommendations.

The biggest question is how much of a difference are you expecting and is it worth the cost of admission.

 

[Earl Simpson]

I would definately get off my diet for that beer!

 

[Legairre]

How about $50 towards speaker wire versus $50 towards speakers? In that case, the decision is a little easier.

Not really. IMO If I already have quality 12ga wire then spending an extra $50 on wire won't make a difference. My extra $50 would still go towards speakers or some other part of my system.

 

[Michael R Price]

Legairre,

In my system for example, $50 is a lot to spend on wires... at the moment I am using speaker leads that cost about $2 to make (which sound better than the usual 16 or 10 awg copper), and $50 in upgrades would be a significant change in my CD player for example. But if a system is to the point where the $50 would not get you a significantly better speaker, amplifier or source... I think better wires are as good a tweak as anything else. There's probably no such thing as "won't make a difference."

 

[Legairre]

I use the phrase won't make a difference, because I don't Believe that $100 worth of wires will sound any better than $50 worth of wires if both sets are the same gauge. I just don't Believe in wires game. Everyone has on opinion on this topic. This is just mine. No offense to anyone is intended.

 

[Michael R Price]

Hey, that's great. After all, it is what the thread is about. I just can't help but encourage people to try these silly things like different wires. It's fun as long as you don't damage your amplifiers twice doing it. (For the record, I only did that once. )

 

[Earl Simpson]

We all have our toys that don't always make sense or seem practical.


Be sure you use high temp/high volt wire if you are pulling wires in a hot attic. 12awg and 10AWG from an electrical resistance standpoint is sufficient for most applications.


resistance is futile, assimilate into the forum

 

[Martice]

I use the phrase won't make a difference, because I don't Believe that $100 worth of wires will sound any better than $50 worth of wires if both sets are the same gauge.

How about this:

I use the phrase won't make a difference, because I don't Believe that $100 worth of wires will sound any DIFFERENT than $50 worth of wires in my system, room and using the source material I listen too especially when two wires are of the same gauge.

Also, how many of us have sat in front of our systems and actually switched cables of a variety of prices and companies and listened for the sake of comparison? The margin of differences are minimal in my experiments and I couldn't tell the difference if I left the room and came back and was asked which cable was used between the CD player and preamp. However, when you are listening critically you are not leaving the room and coming back to sit down. You are listening objectively for the ability of your system to hopefully transport you as close to the original recording as possible. Many people are not critical listeners and some don't even understand the psychological aspect of listening and how to create an environment that will promote the ability to hear into the recorded source. This MAY be the reason that the subtle differences that a cable may make can go unnoticed or be too small for most to even consider worth the price of admission. Critical listening is an acquired taste and is not for everyone and I think it's more about control and tinker ability than just enjoying the music.

Critical listening has it's place and is necessary at certain times like when you purchase a new piece of gear or you change the speaker placement or address room acoustic issue's. The question is can you turn the critic off when it's time to just sit back and enjoy the music.

Coming from an 'audio first' back round I found myself not enjoying my system in a relaxing sense because I kept criticizing my listening session and would spend a good amount of time looking for the culprit. Was it my cable? How about the speaker placement? Do I have my chair on the floor markers? Is it the DAC? Sheesh! One day I said to hell with it and sold my more expensive two channel system and bought a less expensive but more flexible audio/video system with hopes of lowering my expectation of what I should be hearing. Psychologically I figured that I no longer had to listen critically because my current system was not as revealing as my former 2-channel system so I began to just sit back and enjoy myself the way that I had initially hoped I would. However, I do hear minimal sonic short comings in my current system that my former didn't have but I now understand sound a little better than I did a couple of years back and so room acoustics and source quality make the down grading of my gear less painful and I no longer feel that a major upgrade is worth the cost.

In short, can cables make a difference in your system? I believe that I've heard differences when I placed certain cables between the CD player and preamp and some speaker cables in the fronts. Although I now use Belden cables throughout the 2-channel portion of my system, I've had up to $500.00 ITC's in my former 2-channel system thanks to my friend Wen over at E-Audio who let me audition the cables at length before making my choice. Unfortunately, the PODR (point of diminishing returns) kicked in and I leveled out at about $300 for Harmonic Tech Pro Silway's. Would I make such an investment in cables again? No, because the point of enjoying the music is reached way before the point of critically dissecting the music sets in and once you've reached the point of musical enjoyment why look anywhere else? That is unless your a critical listener of music and every perceived detail is a must in order for you to enjoy your source material.

Good Luck

 

[Eric Stuckey]

Kimber Kabal for me.

 

[Michael R Price]

Yah, nice post Martice. I know it's counter to what we know about our acoustic memory, but I just hook up something different and listen to music normally for a few days, and sometimes I notice the little differences... like changing the ground connections on my CD player. Sometimes, it doesn't take so long. When I tried an un-shielded Cat5 interconnect I noticed something was wrong after only a few minutes. Relatively good speaker wires had a fairly quickly noticeable difference in sound, but it took awhile for me to appreciate that I liked it better than before. And I'm talking about cheap DIY and generic cables here, nothing fancy.

What do people think of the magnitude of differences from vibration damping and isolation (pads under CD player, etc) compared to those of different wires?