$250 used speaker cables for warm system

If the system is warm, try Analysis Plus Oval 9. I saw a pair for sale here for about $200 and were 10'. Check out my system for comparison to yours; I really like my set.

Matt

savesome money and pull apart some plenum rated cat5 cable 35 cents a foot at home depot. Use a single run of two wires on each side so you can make say a 10 foot pair out of ten feet of cat5 because it is in double runs..oh man I should finish my first coffee before I srat wrting here. Just hook it up with bare wire. You can make some great ic's with this stuff too.

I second the cat 5 idea.
look here: http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/triple_t_e.html

I've made these and they are a pain in the ass, but kind of fun hobby for a weekend.

Get the best cat-5 you can get (Belden 1585A CAT 5 Teflon coated or similar), it doesn't cost that much more compared to the investment of labor. Just buy a huge box of it from an online computer vendor. (I think for a 10' pair run you actually need 150ft of raw cable!)

The ones I made were fast and open with good detail and ok slam, great deal for the price.

CAT-5 is not designed for optimum audio listening. Yes, the shielding is good but it's only 18 gauge for the + and 22 gauge for the original. It may sound clean but without any bass and I would be scared to run 200 watts into it for a few hours.
I have whole house audio with CAT-5+ runs of up to several hundred feet. I chose to run 16 gauge speaker wire for all of the in-wall/ceiling speakers.
You don't have to spend a lot. You may even find some older tara, apature or vecteur wire for 10 to 20% of what it cost new.
Feel free to email me on suggestions,
Emery

Shielding on a speaker cable is not typically a desirable attribute. As such, what makes you want that specific feature ? Using a low inductance speaker cable is typically the preferred method of minimizing the susceptability of the system to picking up RFI. One can obtain good results like this without having to resort to an actual shield.

Having said that, you might want to look for some Kimber 4TC or 8TC. Both tend to sound pretty open without having a hard high end. The Analysis Plus Oval 9's may also work for you, but i think that these cables are HIGHLY system and personal preference dependent. I'm sure that there are plenty of other cables out there that others may have greater experience with.

If attempting to build CAT 5 cables, be aware that there are different grades of CAT 5 and multiple design geometries out there. Some can be highly capacitive, to the point of requiring Zobel networks so as to minimize the potential for damage to an amp from high frequency oscillation.

Other than that, you might want to try working with speaker placement a bit more if you haven't already done so. Sean
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