Speaker Wire for a non-anal listener

Stick with a low inductance design. This means some type of twisted pair or spiral wrapped star quad cabling. Due to the length of the cable, you need to keep the gauge on the heavier side. Having said that, using a heavy gauge in a high inductance design can make things worse, so you should balance the gauge with the geometry of cabling used.

The Canare cable mentioned above is a good deal and would provide you with an excellent cable for the money. Another alternative along the same vein for even less money would be to buy a 100' spool of one of the two cables mentioned below.

Parts Express 4x16 gauge spiral wrapped #100-756

Parts Express [http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/pshowdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=100-768] 4x14 gauge spiral wrapped #100-768[/url]

A single run of the 4x16 gauge cable split in half ( 2 pos, 2 neg ) equates to a 13 gauge conductor. This in itself should suffice, but if you wanted to, and you would have plenty of cable to do so if you bought the spool, you could run completely separate runs of cabling for the tweeters and for the woofers. This would mean 2 pos & 2 neg for the tweeters in one jacket and 2 pos & 2 neg for the woofers in another jacket. This would equate to a total of 10 gauge for the combined runs of cabling. This would total $25 plus shipping with plenty of extra cable to spare for future use.

Using the 4x14 cable in the same manner, a single run ( 2 pos & 2 neg ) divided between the woofer and tweeter would equate to an 11 gauge conductor. Doubling up the runs and then splitting them as mentioned above would equate to appr 8 gauge. This would set you back $34 plus shipping, which is still extremely reasonable and well beyond any other type of cabling that you could buy for similar money.

Either of these types of installation would pretty much demolish any other type of installation using far more expensive cabling. When properly configured, these cables are very low loss, wide bandwidth and resistive to RFI ( Radio Frequency Interference ). Using any type of high inductance i.e. "zip cord" type cabling DRASTICALLY increases the potential for the cabling to introduce radio interference into your system.

If you live near any type of major traffic area, this is something to think about. After all, you don't want to invest in a product that could end up creating problems for you. It is better to buy something that is more sensibly designed to begin with, therefore negating any potential problems in the future.

Believe me, it is no fun listening to cab drivers, CBer's or ham operators coming through your speakers, especially when you could have avoided it by simply not using zip cord ( side by side speaker cabling ). I and many others that i know have experienced this very phenomena, so it is for real. Not only can it be very frustrating dealing with such a situation, it will scare the hell out of you the first time that you hear someone wailing through your system at high amplitude via their radio communications gear. After that, it is simply annoying, but slightly more expected. Avoiding the use of zip cord not only drastically reduces the potential for such things to occur, it also increases the potential for better sonics within the confines of your system. Sean
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The second link, which i screwed up, should have been as follows:
Parts Express 4x14 gauge spiral wrapped #100-768

Sorry 'bout dat. My being away for a few days has taken toll on my ability to post : ) Sean
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I agree with Sfar. Use Canare 4s11. I normally pay .85 per foot so the price from his source is very good. I have used aq type 4 also (still own it) but find Canare to be far superior. It should work very well in your set up. It has very good bass response and has a nice spatial quality to it. If you are really doing this on the cheap, then pass on terminations and you can do 2 - 15 foot runs for about 20 bucks. I normally buy from Dan at heartlandcalbes.com. He makes great IC's using Belden cable and Eichmann Bullet Pluggs for around 50 bucks. They are fabulous. I liked them better in my second system than the Harmonic Technology Truthlink Silver I was using. (savings of over 200 bucks)

Erik, do consider Paul Speltz's 'Anti-Cables', here http://www.zeroimpedance.com/products.html . For allegedly-high-end speakercable, they're highly affordable at $10 per pair-foot, delivered, and apparently sound quite good. ('Mine' are ordered but not yet received.)

I'm also firmly in the solid-conductor-NOT-stranded camp. You'll do yourself a favor staying away from all that stuff. (Now THERE's a statement that should generate some disagreement!). Start and end your affordable-speakercable quest with something you'll never have to replace.

BTW, I too believe Audioquest makes some VERY-nice sounding stuff. I use their KE-6, a 4-pairs-of-silver cable that uses their Dielectric-Bias System.

You'll learn a lot reading AQ's cable-theory blurb, here http://www.audioquest.com/pdfs/aq_cable_theory.pdf .
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Here's another vote for Canare 4s11. This is the same cable that Blue Jeans
Cables uses and most likely is the same cable River Cable uses in their
speaker cables. River Cables has sheath on theirs, but the specs on their
"Star Flex" just happen to duplicate those of the Canare "
Star Quad." I wouldn't be at all surprised if you found Canare 4s11
inside the sheaths of other expensive cables, too. For less than 70 cents a
foot from Markertek and either bare wired or with connectors, you'll have
excellent cables.

If you look at speltz's "anti-cables," you should be aware that
these are classic "high inductance" cables. The positive and
negative are separate and left to dangle apart from each other. This will
cause high inductance and could result in attenuation and a rolled off high
end. When I say it "could" -- this is because your results will
depend on whether the positive and negative fall in proximity to one another
or not. Unless you are looking to achieve an audible loss of amplitude in your
high frequencies, this cable would not be high on my list. Just depends on
what you are trying to achieve.