XLO Speaker Wire

Glenn_N · 05-07-2003, 01:37 AM

I just bought 200' of XLO speaker wire online and it has four wires in the cable. Red, White, Green, and Black. Is this for two speakers or am I suppose to use two of the wires for each feed?:b

Greg*go · 05-07-2003, 07:09 AM

It is meant for 1 set of speakers, or if your speakers have 2 sets of inputs, you can use it for that too. The four different colors is to help you make sure you're plugging them all in right.

Wes Goff · 05-07-2003, 04:08 PM

red for right pos.
black for right neg.
white for left pos.
green for left neg.

Glenn_N · 05-07-2003, 04:12 PM

Thanks guys. I will be setting my system up in the next couple of days.

Glenn_N · 05-07-2003, 05:21 PM

I just spoke with the company I bought the XLO from and he says to hook Red & White together for positive, and hook Black & Green together for negative. I asked again, "so you are saying I should use all 4 wires to feed one speaker"? His reply was that it would strengthen the signal to each speaker and to use banana plugs to connect it all together. Does this sound right?

The wires inside the cable seem to be 14 gauage according to my wire stripers.

On the outside the cable says:
XLO/CDA Contininuous Cast Copper Cables for Design Application E119037

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JeremyFr · 05-07-2003, 07:51 PM

Well design application means to me that they are meant to be used for inwall applications for extensive home audio "in wall" multi room systems. The four conductors I would imagine would be good for biwiring a speaker where you'd need a set of 4 wires to wire it. Other than that I would not use all 4 to feed a normal speaker this could cause serious signal degredation and the sales rep was completely wrong in what he said. Theres a point where you can have too much wire and actually add resistance load to the amplifier making it harder to drive the speakers. I would personally not recommend using all 4 hooked together to feed on non bi wirable speaker.

Jeremy

Bill Lucas · 05-07-2003, 08:56 PM

It's 14/4 wire. Installers use this to run a pair of speakers in distributed audio situations. You can twist it together to get a larger gauge or you can simply just use 2 of the conductors (red and black would be a natural pair) if you are using dedicated runs to each speaker. You could have saved some money by purchasing 14/2 (14 gauge, 2 conductor).

Glenn_N · 05-08-2003, 10:02 AM

I went to Good Guys yesterday and one of the sales guys said he used to work at a custom install place for home theater. He also said to twist the sets of wires together to create a larger gauge wire.
Since that is the 3rd response I have had saying to wire them together, that is my plan. I bought the Monster banana plugs yesterday to do this. Unless I hear any other negatives of doing this I am going to give it a try.
Thanks for the info.

(Nobody trusts the cable company anyway! Just kidding.)
Glenn

JeremyFr · 05-08-2003, 04:16 PM

hehe thats so true though, when people ask where I work I always through my fingers in the air mocking quotation marks and say, "the evil cable company!" hehe, I work in our repair dept and you'd laugh if you heard how many customers think we watch them through there cable etc its really funny.