best rcas and speaker wire?
Printed From: the12volt.com
Forum Name: Car Audio
Forum Discription: Car Stereos, Amplifiers, Crossovers, Processors, Speakers, Subwoofers, etc.
URL: https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp?tid=106806
Printed Date: May 05, 2024 at 3:01 AM
Topic: best rcas and speaker wire?
Posted By: audioinstaller3
Subject: best rcas and speaker wire?
Date Posted: August 15, 2008 at 10:54 AM
What are some good rca's and speaker wire? My sub amp is pushing 740wrms to my 2 10" subs. The 4 ch. kicker amp is pushing 120wrms per ch. I have 3 different rca's ran now, one is kinda crappy the others are ok. But I would like to replace them all. My buddy can get me some monster purple rca's, with thick insulation for $20 each. Also I want to run new speaker wire to each speaker since the cheap 16g walmart wire I bought is burning up. Any help would be appreciated Thanks.
Replies:
Posted By: megaman
Date Posted: August 15, 2008 at 11:25 AM
There are a ton of good quality RCA's on the Market. Monster Cable RCA's are good but I think a little overpriced. We sell Stinger, so their HPM series of RCA's are what we get our customers into if they want the high end cables. For speaker wire, you'll probably want to step up to at least 12gauge wire. Again, stinger makes a great product, but any name brand such as Stinger, Rockford, Tsunami, etc. will suffice. Stay away from Wal-Mart for so many reasons. Anyone else notice their Scosche Kits sold at Wal-Fart are the worst in the world? The 4gauge amp kits have power wire that are 8gauge wire with 0gauge insulation. lol.
Posted By: frizkysquirrel
Date Posted: August 15, 2008 at 12:02 PM
actually that was my first amp kit lol.
i compared my old 4 gauge Scosche with my 4 gauge 1940 strand rockford and it is the same size. but the rockford wire works sooo well. it almost eliminated my headlights dimming. what eliminated the headlights dimming was the big three upgrade. i dont know if its wize, but i have some nice shielded rca cables i bought from best buy. they were in the home audio section and they work perfectly fine.
i think as long as you stray from the major power hungry components in your wire routing, such as i found my steering column introduced noise, you should be fine with most any cable.
Posted By: audiocableguy
Date Posted: August 15, 2008 at 1:27 PM
Covered ground here folks. Do a search.
Posted By: tedmond
Date Posted: August 16, 2008 at 12:09 AM
walmart is a no no. spend the extra buck. i agree that monster is overpriced. i use stinger as well, but i push the streetwirez most of the time since both available in canada and its something i can rely on. tsunami from circuit city isnt available here. SOL fosgate kits are good but hard to come by.
Posted By: haemphyst
Date Posted: August 16, 2008 at 12:27 AM
There is a $25,000 reward still offered by an engineer (I'll try to locate the name of the guy - DYohn might know) to ANYBODY that can hear, in a true A/B/X, double-blind laboratory situation, the difference between ANY wire and any other wire. You're paying for bling, kids. Go to Radio Shack, and get whatever wire they have on the shelf.
I admit that I, too, pay for the bling, but I do realize that is what I am paying for. I recall about 10 years ago (or so) Stereophile rated Radio Shack 18G solid HOOK-UP WIRE an "A". And it was 3 dollars for a pair of 10 foot cables. In the SAME BREATH, they rated KimberKable a "B", and those were $35,000, for a one meter pair of "oxygen-free, long-grain silver" "special geometry" cables. (Black Pearl, I believe was their title) Forget the names UNLESS you want to pay "for the name". The wire, inside, is the same as any other wire.
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It all reminds me of something that Molière once said to Guy de Maupassant at a café in Vienna: "That's nice. You should write it down."
Posted By: DYohn
Date Posted: August 16, 2008 at 2:01 PM
James Randi's challenge is a million bucks. Here's a good resource for wire myths: https://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm------------- Support the12volt.com
Posted By: audioinstaller3
Date Posted: August 17, 2008 at 10:21 AM
ok so your saying that whatever wire I buy, doesn't matter, because they are all the same. So why is the 16g walmart wire I bought burning the inside of the insulation near the amp hook up? If all wire is the same. I could run 18g regular factory car speaker wire and have no problems. But we all know thats not the truth. The more power you push threw the wire, the thicker the wire needs to be.
Posted By: DYohn
Date Posted: August 17, 2008 at 10:31 AM
audioinstaller3 wrote:
ok so your saying that whatever wire I buy, doesn't matter, because they are all the same. So why is the 16g walmart wire I bought burning the inside of the insulation near the amp hook up? If all wire is the same. I could run 18g regular factory car speaker wire and have no problems. But we all know thats not the truth. The more power you push threw the wire, the thicker the wire needs to be.
Because the walmart wire you bought is probably cheap crap made in China from lead-based dog food. Wire is wire as long as it is well-made. The point of the posts above is you don't have to pay $400 for some esoteric silver-plated Mega cable when a $25 cable will work just as well. But no one would argue that stuff from the 99-cent store is always good quality. As far as higher power needing larger wire, this is true but only under specific situations. Speaker wire is pretty much always good enough at 14 guage. REAL 14-guage made from copper. I've used 16-AWG wire in genuine 2000-watt systems and it is just fine, thanks. If you are burning 16-awg wire then either it is defective, not really 16 AWG, or you have a short circuit that is for some reason not blowing your amp. ------------- Support the12volt.com
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