Speaker cable ??? (1 Viewer)

[Brian Bergen]

I was out browsing speakers a few weeks ago and noticed some brands advertise that they have monster cable inside. That got me thinking. What is in my Klipsch KG2.2 's? I opened up the speaket and found out that the wire that runs fronm the binding post's to the crossover and beyond is 18 guage wire.We spend X amount of dollars on patch cables and speaker wire.
My question is are we spending to much money when the final component in the audio chain has sub par wiring?

 

[Chu Gai]

Well I'm a little unclear here as to what you mean by sub-par wiring? After all, the lengths are short and the resistance over that length is trivial. You see, most people have their own peculiar, which can mean unique you know, ideas of what constitutes the limiting factor. People will argue about wires, interconnects, cable lifts, silver outlets, RFI shields, isolation or coupling devices, whose DAC is best, the amplifier topology, and the list goes on and so do the steady stream of dollars and hopes based on 'just maybes'.

There are two things that people can do to help themselves and address the real limiting factor and improving the worst component(s). They are the room followed by the speakers. That's the problem, not the 18 gauge wire or the 22 gauge wire. Think about it.

 

[Ted Lee]

yeah, kinda funny if you think about it.

we spend all this money and recommend super-thick wiring, but when you get down to the meat and potatoes (the internal wiring), the stuff is usually 18g or thinner!

while it's a good idea to "hedge your bets" and get yourself some decent cabling and thick speaker wire (i suppose distance could be used as an excuse),you sure don't need to spend a bazillion dollars to do it.

 

[Iver]

True, the wire run from the speaker-wire connections to the crossover and voice coil(s) is so short that it's not going to add appreciable resistance at 18 or 22 AWG.

But remember that there's still one more component in the active chain: the voice coil, typically 200 feet of 28 AWG.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

The short-runs of wire inside the speaker cabinent can be 18 ga and it works just fine. It's the longer runs that you want thicker wire.


But you need the thin wire so that when wrapped into a coil it creates a fairly tight toroid to concentrate the magnetic field near the magnet. Thicker wire would shove the outer loops so far away from the magnent that these loops would have minimal effect.

It's one of those strange things:

- You want THICK wire to minimize issues going from amp to speaker.

- You want THIN wire for the voice coil to concentrate/intensify many of the same issues you were trying to avoid getting to the speaker.

 

[PaulKoss]

I was a sceptic until I replaced my $35 copper 12 gauge Radio Shack speaker wire with $200 special "audiophile" speaker cable. The audiophile cable gave me a flat soundstage lacking in detail. I went back to the Radio Shack wire and the soundstage improved noticeably. This is not something I imagined. If I was going to imagine something, it would be that my "audiophile" cable was better because it cost me a lot more. Seems to me that the audio cable business is right up there with the used car business when it comes to hucksterism and hype.