Why are wires a bunch of teeny little strands? (1 Viewer)

[Tim Kline]

OK, a friend of mine gave me a big spool of wire, saying it would be great for speaker wire.. Just looking at it I'd guess I have around 200 feet on the spool and it's kinda heavy .. but my monster cable stuff is a bunch of teeny little strands inside the rubber.. this is SOLID copper wire, and it's about as thick as the monster cable speaker wire I use. So, do I want to use this solid wire stuff, or is the regular kind better overall for sound?
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Tim Kline
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[Jeremy Hegna]

The solid wire is going to be much less maleable, harder to work with. It will obviously be near impossible to bare wire it to the binding posts, however, if you're soldering it to a banana plug or spade, it will sound fine.
The sound quality may or may not differ. The wire war will go on for generations to come, so I won't comment on that.
Jeremy

 

[Graeme Shiomi]

Actually, I use bare-wire to my binding posts and I've got Solid Wire (Audioquest Slate).
One objective advantage is that solid wire is safer with respect to shorts. There's no chance that a stray strand will cause a short.
Graeme

 

[Allan Jayne]

Caution for those with 'home theater in a box' and similar less expensive equipment: Solid wire, particulary in the thicker gauges suggested for speaker connections, can be so stiff that binding posts and terminals can be ripped out of the amp and speakers if you accidentally kick the cables.
Other video hints: http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm
[Edited last by Allan Jayne on August 05, 2001 at 06:52 AM]

 

[Todd Hochard]

Stranded wire is more flexible- that's why it's used for speaker wire. Not much else to it.
Stranded wire CAN provide a higher surface contact area at the connection points, due to the ability to spread the individual conductors out, so that more are touching the connection point. Solid wire has slightly higher conductivity along the length of the wire.
Todd