Speaker Cable Requirements 1 Ohm Load

A long run of cable use a heavy 10 AWG wire..to be safe. With shorter runs at 2ohm load I would say you could go with a 12AWG or even a 14 and be safe...my opinion only and sure many will think different.

Short runs are always preferable, and when using cold ICE monos, they can be stacked.

Assuming you want the cable to be as neutral as possible, the basic ideas are that:

1)You want to limit the resistance of the cables carrying low frequencies to a small fraction of the impedance of the speaker at low frequencies.

2)For the cables carrying high frequencies you want to keep the combined effects of resistance and inductance to a small fraction of the impedance of the speaker at high frequencies (cable inductance may be a significant factor at high frequencies, but will not be significant at low frequencies).

Resistance and inductance are both directly proportional to length.

You can calculate resistance from a wire gauge table such as this one. For a 1 to 3 ohm speaker impedance at low frequencies, I would try to keep the cable resistance in the area of 0.05 ohms or less. That would be the resistance of the cable length x 2, reflecting the total length of both conductors.

For a 1 to 3 ohm speaker impedance at high frequencies, I would also try to keep the cable resistance roughly in the area of 0.05 ohms or less. I would try to keep its inductive reactance (the impedance caused by its inductance) roughly in the area of 0.25 ohms or less at 20kHz, as calculated by the formula 6.28 x 20,000Hz x L, where L is inductance in Henries (for the combined inductance of both conductors in the cable, which is sometimes referred to as the "loop inductance").

Regards,
-- Al