Wire Size

Hey I was just wondering whats the point of all these thick 2 and 4 guage wiring. Im using 4 guage to run my amp but why is it necessary. (Car Battery jumpers are 4 guage). So whats the point of 2 guage?

umm yea but i can run a 1000w microwave on like a 12g wire so ive gotta go wit him wuts the point? i mean my house stereo is louder and doesnt use huge ass cable i personally think its a scam made by the speaker companys the only use i could see for 1/0g wire is if u have like 5 amps and u wanna puti t to a power block

In order to produce the large amount of power that amplifiers have they must be able to get current. If you take a big amp that has 150amps or more of draw, and there are amps this big and bigger, a lot of them have power / ground inputs for wire of this size. An amplifier needs to current to step up the voltage in it's power supply to provide amplification. The more current the amp requires to make this power, the larger the wire to carry that current needs to be. What you are comparing is apples and oranges. Generally speaking, If you increase voltage and the current stays the same, wattage rises. If current rises and voltage stays the same, wattage rises. Have you ever noticed that all amplifiers are different sizes and have different size fuses, yet, generally speaking, the battery voltage stays the same. For an experiment go hook your sub amp up with 18 gauge wire for the power and ground and see what happens, feel the wire after a couple of minutes, I'll bet you it's a little warm or already melted. Notice those battery cables you talked about that were 4 gauge. Imagine trying to jump start your car with 18 gauge speaker wire, the battery voltage is 14.4 volts isn't it, so why can't you use a speaker wire, because the answer my friend is current. You have an amplifier, not a wattlifier. Hope this helps in some way or another to your question.

A 1000 watt microwave @ 115 volts AC uses about 8.5 amps, a 1000 watt car amp @ 12.8  volts DC   uses about 78 amps of current. If you use a 12 g on your 1000 watt car amp, it will be a fire waiting to happen