what speaker cable to buy for my new paradigms. (1 Viewer)

[Chu Gai]

The Great Canadian Beer Challenge
Analysis of the Reserve and the Regular Bottlings
Wine Experts Fooled

 

[WayneO]

Thanks Chu, interesting reads.

 

[EddyObregon]

Well i bought the paradigm dealers proffesional install speaker wire its called anicom. it goes for 45 cents a feet and he said thats what they use to wire 1000 dollars systems in peoples home. He said that it would be hard to tell a difference fromt his cable to the monster. This is 14 gauge offcourse. Will this 14 guage cable be an upgrade over my 4 year old 16 guage monster xp. Is this cable good enough you think.

 

[Luitz]

Did you try it what do u think?

 

[Marty M]

Speaker wire creates as much heated debate as DD vs. DTS. I for one, had a positive experience with an expensive speaker cable. I bought a bi-wired cable for $200 for 3 meter. I noticed a sound difference right away. But as someone earlier said, "to each his own."

 

[EddyObregon]

I havent tried it do you think that this 14 guage woudl be better than monster cable xp 16 guage that i have had for 4 years. I figured it would be better since its a thicker cable

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Remember young grasshoper: "No cable can make your system sound better. Good cable just makes it sound less worse."

 

[Mike_Skeway]

Any wire from 12-16 ga will be fine. Don't buy cable that cost more than your speakers and/or HT.

FWIW, I use 8 AWG SoundKing all around.

 

[EddyObregon]

cool but the lower the guage you go does that mean it will soudn a tad better though.

 

[Nathan J]

Bigger cable = less resistance.

Bigger cable doesnt mean better sound quality.
Better constructed cables or cables made of better materials mean better sq.

Just because you use 12ga over 14ga, does NOT mean its going to sound BETTER.

A jump to a larger cable will not sound better, although it might sound different, (I.E., louder), if you were using a large amp to power large speakers, and using tiny cable.

 

[Mike_Skeway]

No it doesn’t, I posted a chart on this forum about speaker AWG vs. length and power. Here is the link.

 

[EddyObregon]

well to me any cable that cost less than 1 dollar a foot is practically all the same. Monster and all these competice cables. As long as its copper then its really all about the insualtion and stuff. You dotn start seeing a difference in speaker cable sound quality until you start paying the big bucks... Under 1.00 I say most of them if not all equal out to be pracitcally the same.

 

[EugeneR]

A couple of thoughts:

Just because someone honestly hears a difference in cable, even a significant difference, does not automatically mean that there actually is one. We all like to believe that our perception and reality are one and the same, but often they are not even close. It is a scientific fact that vast majority of people will prefer an object to another if told it cost more, even if the objects are identical. The percentage goes up even higher if the person actually paid a premium for the identical object. To admit that the costlier object is not in any way superior to the cheaper one is to admit having wasted one's money, which people definitely do not want to do.

I don't care how neutral an observer a person is, knowing that a piece of equipment is expensive makes that person far more likely to believe that the equipment is better, whether it is true or not. When it comes to perception, what is between the ears is far more important than the ears themselves.

This is a debate than neither side will ever win. It's a religion--you have your believers and non-believers. I'm not even sure we can discuss this kind of thing on this forum. However, the fact is that to my knowledge there has never been a single scientifically conducted (i.e. blind A/B) test ever done by anyone in which even so-called "golden ears" were able to tell the difference between high-end and and basic good quality wire, be it inteconnects or speaker wire. Wine and/or beer are often compared to wire and cable as an exampe of "quality vs. crap", but with beer and wine blind tests are done frequently with convincing results which are replicable. I'm pretty sure if there were such scientific tests conducted which showed such differences in cables, every interconnect company out there would be boasting about it. The tests have been done, but no one is running around publicizing results. Doesn't stop some people from paying $15,000 for a six foot length, though.

The argument that believers often make to counteract the lack of any scientific data (or their own inability to tell the difference in a blind test) is that expensive cables make a difference in their own system, or it needs break-in time to show, or they were uncomfortable in the test setting, or something similar. Even if true, it would seem that if such carefully controlled conditions are needed to be able to tell a difference, the differences would be too small for human ears to be able to discern a vast majority of the time.