Speaker wire

The zombie of Roger Russell speaks his tune once more. And McIntosh show demos are done with zip cord off the backs of the amps, right.

You don't need any special speaker wire to suit your very sensitive speakers, but you will find some benefit in using wire made for the purpose, i.e. speakers. Not to say the Wall Mart cord won't work either.

I tried 12-gauge Romex, then a Brit-made QED wire, then moved way up to a whole 300 bucks for two used 8-foot biwire lengths of Ensemble cable. There are a whole lot of very reasonably-priced products you could be trying as you start off. One I use in a second system (and think very good value) is Audioquest Type 4.

Assuming that you want the cable to behave in a neutral manner, the main criterion is that you want the resistance of the cable to be a very small fraction of the speaker's minimum impedance at any frequency.

The post in this thread dated 7-6-07, 12:16 p.m., quotes an old review as indicating a minimum impedance of 4 ohms, which occurs at 140Hz.

IMO, 1% of the minimum speaker impedance can generally be expected to be a comfortably low cable resistance. It can be calculated from this wire gauge table that 13 gauge wire corresponds to a resistance of 0.04 ohms, for the 20 foot round-trip distance the signal has to travel from amplifier to speaker and back. A lower gauge number would be even better, of course.

Bob's suggestion of the Belden-based Blue Jeans cables is a good low-priced choice, IMO. Anti-Cables or Vampire Wire are other good low-priced choices, IMO. The 14 gauge alternative offered by Blue Jeans, as well as the 14 gauge suggestion above, while not meeting the 1% guideline I suggested may still have resistance that is low enough to be acceptable.

For longer runs, and/or for speakers having impedances that drop to low values at high frequencies, inductance can also be a significant factor, but I would not expect it to be significant in your situation.

Regards,
-- Al

Hi Amandarae

Thanks for posting that 6moons link. I had some extra GLS Audio locking banana plugs and extra some cheap heat shrink tubes I found in my basement. I was going to big box home improvement store today to pick up various things so I decided to pick up some patio power cord similar to the one mentioned in the link. I spent about an hour making the speaker wire and I'm very happy with it. In my 2nd system I was using some old speaker wire that I got for free when I purchased a pair of speakers and to me music was sounding a bit harsh. With these newer speaker cables music isn't fatiguing.

My speakers though have a sensitivity of 90db @ 8 ohms. Even with the GLS Audio locking bananas I know I came in way under $50 for speaker wire that is pretty sweet sounding.

To the OP I say give the homemade cables from the 6moons article a shot. The cost to give it a try is next to nothing.

Recently I purchased a pair of MIT EXp 1 cables (blemished) and they were vast improvement to my 14g Vampire. Prior to that had standard 12 gauge cables.

Your welcome Jedinite! Glad it works for you.