30' Sub Cable using RG6? (1 Viewer)

[Gil Riddall]

I am finishing my basement and want to run my speaker cables in-wall. The cable run from my equipment to mySub is about 30 feet (maybe a little less). Can I use an RG6 cable for this? What connectors would you recommend as well (I'm thinking Cardas SLVR). Thanks for any advise you can give on this - i want to get it right the first time

 

[Bob Bartlett]

You can use it. I used the regular cable with f connectors and bought f to rca adapters, worked fine.

 

[Gil Riddall]

Thanks Bob. I have used a coax as you mentioned previously, but I just wonder whether this cable carries the low frequencies as well as it does the high frequencies it was designed to carry. Any thoughts from others?

 

[Seth_L]

I've use RG59 for sub signals before. In fact I am currently. I haven't noticed any problems or issues.

 

[David_Rivshin]

You're going to want to use a cable that has a solid (or stranded) copper center conductor. Most common RG59 and RG6 use copper coated steal center conductors, which are fine for RF signals but aren't very good for lower frequency (eg. baseband audio and video) signals. You should be able to go hundreds of feet with a subwoofer signal over good RG6, and probably on RG59 as well; LF signals don't degrade as much over distance as HF signals.

If you can find a cable in RadioShack with a solid copper center conductor than you can either cut off the ends and crimp on your own RCAs, or just buy their F->RCA adapters.

Personally I have a big spool of Belden 1694A RG6 cable which I use for everything. Overkill for subs and video cables, and less flexible than ideal, but easier to have one cable for everything than to have a different spool and different connectors for each task. Oh, as for connectors I use the gold RCA crimp-ons from PartsExpress.

Hope this helps,
-- Dave