How thick is too thick? (1 Viewer)

[Jon Cheung]

Hey guys, I have a basic question to ask you. What is the maximum thickness I should use for me speakers? Their just old floor standing speakers. I've seen a tonne of speakers using 16 gauge but would you get some out of your speakers to use say something around 10 gauge? Thanx

 

[Khoa Tran]

12 gauge is good enough but i've seen 6 gauge before....but they were for jm lab utopias

 

[Chris Tsutsui]

I'd use 12 gauge as the biggest wire. It is easily capable of over 600 watts at the average lengths.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Ok, let's get back to basics.
Speaker wire thickness is NOT about power handling.
A long run of speaker wire carrying audio will "slant" the sounds at the end. This means the low-frequency sounds will pass through nearly perfectly, but the upper frequencies will be rolled-off a bit. Not to total silence, but enough that some people claim to be able to hear the difference over say 15 feet of 16 ga wire.
A thicker wire reduces, but does not eliminate the effect.
This is why some audiophile speaker sites recommend the following:
1-10 ft: 16 ga
11-20 ft: 14 ga
20+ ft: 12 ga
So the thicker wire should be used on the longer runs. And since the thicker wire is more expensive, it becomes quite expensive.
And remember that for a HT system, the rear speakers tend to be effects speakers, not dialog, and not main music or critical sounds. So why spend 2-5 times as much for the rear sounds?
A good spool of 12 ga Sound King speaker wire from places like www.partsexpress.com seems to be the accepted wire for all speakers.
Hope this helps.

 

[Jon Cheung]

Thanks for the replys but I'm wondering something. If you say that some sites recommend using 16 ga for 1-10 feet, if you were to use 12 ga, would there be a difference or is it just useless to use that thick of wire? Thanx

 

[Bob McElfresh]

For short runs, I doubt that you would hear any difference between 16/14/12 ga wire. (Note: someone probably has some nice Martin Logan panel speakers with a SACD player and 500 watts-per-channel amps that could tell the difference.)


But it would be a pain to buy 3 spools of wire and use different gauges for different lengths. This is why a 100 ft spool of 12 ga for about $40 comes in. While it is over-kill for short runs, for less than $0.50/ft - why not?

 

[TonyTone]

Speaking of Sound King and PartsExpress, I don't know if this is a great deal or not but partsexpress.com has 12 ga 100' spool of Sound King speaker wire on sale right now for $25 until 6 PM EST tonight! IMHO at 25 cents per foot for 12 gauge, it's hard to beat that!

I was a bit turned off by the estimated $12.25 UPS ground shipping costs; hopefully, it was indeed "estimated" a bit too high, as IMHO $12 is way too much to ship a spool of wire from Ohio (assuming it is indeed shipped from there) to California via UPS ground.

 

[AlanZ]

Tony, thanks for the heads-up on the speaker wire special. I needed three 100' runs, and was able to get all that for $75 plus shipping ($11) from Parts Express. That saved me at least $30, so I appreciate you posting that.