Does anyone use this for speaker wire? I recently read about it in The Absolute Sound. The gave it a favorable review. It's 14g black and orange outdoor cable. You snip off the AC ends and attatch some termination. There are 3 wires inside the jacket, each with their own shielding. The 3rd wire is the ground, which, I just left alone. As far as I can tell, it sounds great. I'm just curious if anyone else uses this extention cable? I know other's here have used Home Depot speaker wire, but outdoor extention cord??
Wow, interesting. NOT what I was expecting to see! I was thinking more along the lines: But no; you make me go instead! Heh, can't help you here...I've never used it for speaker wire before. But w/the price of good quality 12 gauge wire so cheap How can you go wrong? I'd order this stuff instead. My $.02. Good luck.
I had one of the longer HD ext cords that "someone" hacked (luckily I wasn't using it when they sliced halfway through it at the door). I was all bent and was gonna trash it when I stumbled on the Quad reference to this stuff (they reportedly used it for their gear at a show in London), so I figured what the heck, finished hacking it into equal halves and hooked up the mains in the den with it. Grand shtuff! Never got eaten by the vacuum or the cat. i'm past the golden ear/teenage days so I probably couldn't hear any difference anyway (and I'd sold my metering gear long before) but shockingly enough no one else could ever hear a difference. I've also tried the outdoor 12v 12awg from HD along w/ regular 12AWG SoundKing equivalent. All were indistinguishable. All were runs of 8 to 17 feet at most, so you wouldn't expect any perceivable difference from the speakers.
Speaker wire will forever generate a fun debate that's for sure. I just thought it was interesting to see a publication like the Absolute Sound throw this wire in along with high end cables just for kicks.
Many people also are raving about the use of THHN (building wire) as speaker cables. You can buy just about any color/guage size under the rainbow and twist it to look exactly like some higher-end cables. Bill
I bought some and tried it out. Predictably it sounded as bad (or good, take your pick) as the purpose built cable it replaced. Wire really is wire... IMHO. If the color works, I'd say go for it.
What does Home Depot have to do with it? Any extension cable that has similar specs will do the same... not to mention you can just buy the cable used to make electrical cords in bulk and use it all you like, without wasting the plugs. In-wall wire comes in 2 and 4 conductor jacketed cables, and is cheap.
Good point, I think they might have just picked the HD outdoor cord because it had 3 (only need 2 of course) 14g wires nicely insulted, inside a good quality jacket. I'm sure there are 100 + 1 other extention cords/wires that would suffice, but the magazine wasn't going to review them all.
Indeed, you can get four-conductor SJOW, SOW, etc. cable stock – presto, instant biamp/biwire speaker cable. Regards, Wayne A. Pflughaupt
Wow, I like that idea! Put some banana plugs or pins on them, and you are good to go! They are even coler-coded!
"What does Home Depot have to do with it?" John, John... Come on, we do have to have some standards here. The higher-end stuff like HD has that certain aura and cache that makes that wire special. We can't have no steenkin' KMart stuff lyin' around here, you know? Also, I don't know of any references to where Quad or TAS ever used wire from KMart or Ollies. We probably should get someone to do a review of extension cords to find the absolute best one. I'll bet that could cause almost as much angst as the great debates over $1K interconnects and speaker wire that costs more than a car. Wonder if I shoulda sold my HD speaker wire on AudioGon? Writing that ad could have been fun.
I'm going to try some 4/0AWG-4C W/G SHLD 600V VNTC. No need to waste time with 14awg/12awg stuff. Bill
"What does Home Depot have to do with it?" The sarcasm around here is thick...I'm glad I love sarcasm. All joking aside, should the Absolute Sound have done a review on every cable, wire and extention cord known to man? "The October issue of the Abosolute Sound will feature over 12,000 pages of in depth review of every copper wire known to mankind. We've gathered over 15,000 of our closest friends to spend some time with everything from extention cords to whatever we can find in our parents basements" I think, just maybe, they picked Home Depot because they couldn't pick everything else.
I'd say they picked Home Depot because it was the closest hardware store, and the fact that they can be found nationwide for the most part. What I meant was, Home Depot has nothing to do with the wire, they don't manufacture it, and likely ANY 14ga or better extension cord will yeild exactly the same results.
I find that Home Depot extension cords give soaring uncoulored highs with a woody texture to the bass. Canadian Tire extension cords lend and trancedint openness to the midrange with adding an almost pinkish orange coloration to the midbass.
I hear ya...I think it might just be a particular brand carried exclusively by HD, although I haven't looked into it. Really, the ONLY reason I put this post out was to see if anyone else had tried the same wire I'm using, to see what opinion they had good/bad. Anyway, I'm definately one of those people that are on the fence about speaker wire.
I actually compared, and am still using, Audioquest Type4 single conductor, solid, high purity wire. I can honestly say, it didn't make a worthwhile difference in my 2ch setup. It was worth the $20 to try it out to me. imo, the black extension cable will sound better than the orange/black Anyone seen the flourescent pink?
Actually, John, you're right on the nose about the black vs. orange/black wires - there was a huge difference. While the green outdoor extension cord was best for CDs, for general usage the black 12awg low-voltage stuff just blew everything else away. All the other wires just colored the sound way too much... And the spousal unit would not let me bring home any flourescent cables. Even she has limits (yeah, right - like, she married me ;~)
I happen to purchase some Cdn Tire extension cord last weekend and replaced the wire to my surrounds. Can't say I found any difference in sound. Looks better than the old wire I had on before. But for sound wise well too much of pain to swap it back and forth to test. Bob
