Good idea to replace speaker wires? (1 Viewer)

hi all,

I bought a new Panasonic SC-HT920 home theatre. So far, the system is producing fairly good sound (surrounds could be slighly better though).

I was reading around the internet that stock speaker wires are (almost) always of the lowest quality and it's a good idea to upgrade the wires. Would anyone else recommend this, and if so which speaker wires would you recommend I buy?
Keep in mind I wouldn't want to spend more than US$180 on speaker wires and I'll need about 120ft of it.

This should do just find...just check to see what's size speaker wire your HTIB is capable of using.

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=100-142

At no more then $180 for 120ft I'd just go to rat shack or home depot.

Not bad. I'll look into them.

I second home depot. They have lots of different guages of wire. Figure out what guage you need and wire it up for cheap. I'll bet you won't hear a difference but its nice to know you tried!

What about these cables? Which one is the best?

Acoustic Research AP16100C 100' 16 AWG Speaker Wire

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/prodde...5&deptid=21244

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/prodde...5&deptid=21244

I just picked up 200' of Monster UL/CL3 wire for my dad for $100. Works great. There's nothing wrong with the Home Depot wire though. I've used the AR wire as well, it's not much different than the Home Depot or Monster wire.

The only reason the included wire is not sufficient is when the awg is too small for the distance and impedance of the speaker. If the wire included was less than 16awg, then I would upgrade to at least 16awg or 14awg. Wire is going to make the least difference in the typical system, so spending top dollar on speaker wire isn't the best allocation of $$.

They only include wire in HTiBs because they know most people would not think to pick up wire at the same time, and most people don't have 50-100ft of wire laying around the house, so they would be disappointed when they got home and couldn't listen to their new toy.

Dude, you have an HTIB, spend $30-$40 on a spool of Home Depot, Sound King, or AR and be done with it. And buy the lowest guage that your speaker/receiver can take. If you want to go out and spend over a hundred dollars on cables for a $500 system more power to you!

One last question. How do I measure/find out how much guage my speakers/amp can take?

Over 50' use 12awg with 8 Ohm speakers. Below that 14awg should handle anything.

Damn Panasonic. Doesn't tell me how many gauges the stock speaker cables are.

Well thank you VERY much for all your help everyone. Sorry for being "nag" of sorts about this.

I'm gonna do some thinking before I do an upgrade or IF I do an upgrade.

Bro,

Listen to Drew - its a HTIB. You could save a lot of money and not compromise performance by getting speaker cable from Home Depot.

Apology accepted.

12 awg is sometimes too thick to fit into the speaker inputs esp if they are clip type.

With a modest HTIB system the wire (most likely 16 or 18 gauge)that came with the system will do fine. If you must upgrade go to Home Depot and purchase the cheapest roll of 14 gauge they have. I am willing to bet that when you are finished swapping wires you will not notice a difference.

Don't spend any more than this to upgrade your speaker wires.

Most of the time when a difference is heard when switching to a name brand wire, it's psychological - one feels they should hear a difference, so their brain tells them they do.

Well if you use flexy clips on the end of the wire you might be able to use something biger. But with your set up the benefit will not be that big.

Yes I'm responding to an old thread.

After some serious research I found that I have 24 guage speaker wire !

I'm planning to pick up 14 or 16 gauge speaker wire from Home Depot to upgrade.

Thank you all for your much appriciated help.

One finaly question however. I noticed that some low-end bass, epecially from the music/score of a movie is pumped into my subwoofer and sounds distorted. Will upgrading my speaker wire allow for some of that bass to be transfered into the front speakers (which I highly doubt, but it's worth a shot to ask)? Or should I wait until HD-DVD/Blu-Ray comes around and upgrade to speakers that have woofers built into the front speakers?