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=121222
Printed Date: May 11, 2024 at 3:34 PM
Topic: speaker wire?
Posted By: licto
Subject: speaker wire?
Date Posted: April 08, 2010 at 9:51 AM
Hey all.... been a while since I posted but want to ask the question no one wants to really hear...... Which speaker wire out there is one of the best / most cost effective for wiring up some seperates....... Things to consider or have questions about....... Size or AWG..... Jacketed...... Number of twists..... Parallel or run just side by side..... Regular good old 16 or 14 guage wire by GE from Home Depot..... bla bla bla..... I am getting ready to finally wire up my Focal 165 V1's to my PDX 4100 in active mode..... 100 X 4 but of course keeping the tweets down in power. Or blowing them up so I have an excuse to replace them.... grin Just want to know if any of you have bumped into what you would consider a great wire to work with, dosent pick up to many stray freq, and is in your opinion a great wire for the price. BTW.... I just picked up 65 feet of RAAMaudio BXT MLV and will be installing when the wire goes in...... I will post some pics and let you all know how it goes. Seems like a great product at a great price for the old ford explorer. Also picked up 3 yards of ensolite closed cell foam...... will be putting that on the inside of all four doors with a 12 X 12 patch behind each speaker trying to kill back wave. Will be sealing up all holes with sheet metal before MLV.... The above is my road to decent mids and tweets untill it is time to put the focals in the trash..... but I have to use what I have for the moment and no use putting in great componets if I dont do the leg work first... Thoughts on speaker wire is where I am at right now.... thanks for your ideas.... Licto
Replies:
Posted By: DYohn
Date Posted: April 08, 2010 at 12:53 PM
I suggest this, or an equivalent. ------------- Support the12volt.com
Posted By: anonymous1
Date Posted: April 08, 2010 at 5:35 PM
DYohn] wrote:
suggest this, or an equivalent.
$10.70 Excellent . . . anything more esoteric than this is a waste of money.
Posted By: oldspark
Date Posted: April 09, 2010 at 5:05 AM
Unless you get the equivalent in a Cat-5B or better twist so that mutual inductions and external interference is canceled out. (Coax is just too capacitive, but is great for powering amps.)
 - I'm just stirring - it's been a while.... (I won't mention mono gr..ns or molec..r c..l boud.r..s.)
Thanks to DY for the link, and Anon's endorsement is truly valued.
(PS - I have similar cable for my driving spots - not through choice - merely availability. But I'm curious to see its insulation breakdown being in the engine bay, over the radiator, frontally exposed (limited to 160kph/100mph), and often free to vibrate and flap about. Alas no noticeable breakdown (or even discoloring!) after a year (or more).... A pleasant surprise indeed!)
Posted By: mastermindz
Date Posted: April 09, 2010 at 6:06 AM
I've used scosche e2 12 gauge wire for my speakers and I've had some pretty good results with it, only paid About $40 for a 50 ft. Roll
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Mastermindz
Posted By: licto
Date Posted: April 09, 2010 at 10:06 AM
Thanks to all..... I picked up what Diyon recommended. Great price and plenty of it.....
Posted By: anonymous1
Date Posted: April 09, 2010 at 4:01 PM
oldspark wrote:
Unless you get the equivalent in a Cat-5B or better twist so that mutual inductions and external interference is canceled out. (Coax is just too capacitive, but is great for powering amps.)
- I'm just stirring - it's been a while.... (I won't mention mono gr..ns or molec..r c..l boud.r..s.)
Thanks to DY for the link, and Anon's endorsement is truly valued.
(PS - I have similar cable for my driving spots - not through choice - merely availability. But I'm curious to see its insulation breakdown being in the engine bay, over the radiator, frontally exposed (limited to 160kph/100mph), and often free to vibrate and flap about. Alas no noticeable breakdown (or even discoloring!) after a year (or more).... A pleasant surprise indeed!)
LOL somehow I predicted that post, I could hear it in my head when I clicked POST. :D Surely, he could use twisted and shielded and plenum ferrite cores and magic dust, but 95% of the installations I ever hear sounds like crap for so many other reasons, that I can't encourage someone to spend a lot on wire unless they rest if the infrasructure is just as meticulously done. If this were 2 Krell or Bryston mono blocks pushing some Carver Platinums or Martin Logans, of course I would have a radically different answer. The voice of God shoud be heard on Martin Logans, rap should be heard on $10 speaker wire.
Posted By: haemphyst
Date Posted: April 09, 2010 at 6:38 PM
anonymous1 wrote:
The voice of God shoud be heard on Martin Logans, rap should be heard on $10 speaker wire.
Martin Logans? Ewww.... AWFUL systems. Proven repeatedly. You should see the third party (NOT the Martin-Logan provided) waterfalls on 'em... No, don't! You'll be depressed. R-R-R-R-I-I-I-I-N-N-N-N-G-G-G-G!!! No matter WHAT you do to them, their response is simply horrific! I, too, used to be a fan of the ML stuff, but not any more! Image? Oh, yeah, there's NO denying they IMAGE as if angels WERE singing through them, but frequency response anomalies GALORE! That, and they need a GIANT room to sound their best.
Now... Get whatever wire you can afford! The stuff DYohn linked is awesome... I've used it myself. Anything more, is simply for the bling! ------------- 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: stevdart
Date Posted: April 09, 2010 at 9:13 PM
But does it have oxygen?  ------------- Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.
Posted By: haemphyst
Date Posted: April 09, 2010 at 9:54 PM
stevdart wrote:
But does it have oxygen?
Well, if it DOES, you don't want it! LOL ------------- 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: anonymous1
Date Posted: April 10, 2010 at 12:27 AM
LOL Well I had some Carver's so I liked the ML's sound in the demo room. I think they model was called Odessy? back then. I bought this heavy duty clear cable that was supposed to be "oxygen free" and later realized it was the same cable they used in jumper cables ;(
Posted By: oldspark
Date Posted: April 10, 2010 at 2:29 AM
Yet again, some great info!
And Anon is as perceptive as usual... you must sense what I stir-respond to.
And this next bit continues in the same mocking vane...
As for people that don't read the Product Description that clearly states "Oxygen free copper...", what can I say?
[Other than I recall reading it - merely since I look for that as OFC is usually far more expensive, and at THAT price for that size! - but had troubles confirming it just now because I am so used to seeing "OFC" predominantly blazing title bars, headings and roll labeling.]
But old timers clearly know the impact of Oxygen. It's like the old non-mono-crystalline copper that would cause signal reflections in the wire - and as any communications guru would know, reflections cause echos & distortions - hence leading to terrible sound quality.
Not to mention the much greater resistance of the wire - but we all know OFC is lower resistance than normal copper - and it's much better spending more on Oxy-free cable than going up a gauge for reduced resistance.
As for newbies that have successfully argued against the domains (mono-crystalline copper) by citing similar barriers in semiconductor components (as well their circuits obviously) and speaker cores, they fail to realise that speaker cores do not conduct electricity (other than the currents that are induced from the wire) besides which bigger/heavier magnets make up for that (never use rare-earth magnets - they are too strong and too small/light to be any good), and they fail to understand that the output to a speaker appears at the outputs of the final drive semi-conductors so any cross-domain conduction between silicon and conductors prior to that is simply irrelevant.
The whole thing reminds me of modern car engines - people claim that alloy V8s or heads etc produce more power than older cast iron. This is obviously false - how can a lighter substance produce more power? Besides, it would obviously crack up under the strain.
I suspect that people confuse alloy power with its lighter weight - the cars accelerate faster as a result. But if you totally ignore the dyno results for torque & (hence) power, I'm sure you will agree with me.
Dyno test are just paper anyhow. (For noobs, that's an older version of "PDF" - just bits in a bucket.)
Maybe it's like someone said in another forum that deals with mp3: "this CAPACITOR discussion always get out of hand... It's like discussing religion.... LOL...".
Previously they said "Installing a capacitor or not is a personal choice... there is a lot of people here that don't believe in them... I have one with great results...". Yeah - I'm with him. He was replying to some goon that claimed a battery would be more effective (and cheaper). Ha! I'm just waiting to see his test results that show the capacitor has far better results than a battery mounted in the same position. That will really fix that anti-cap dork.
Sorry - I got carried away. I love people that claim they are learning - or keen to - yet fail to discuss or follow up.
Damn - I just broke out of my stir mood.....
/ends.
[Just reiterating - the stuff after para 2 & prior to the last paragraph is TIC (Tongue In Cheek, aka TFIC or TFUB (B=butt)).]
Posted By: anonymous1
Date Posted: April 10, 2010 at 10:41 AM
I think we've both been around long enough to not fall for every bit of marketing bullhocky that comes along. You read about 25 years of various mags like Stereophile and forums over the past 15 years, and you'll see these long debates on cable pair twists, silver solder etc. There's no end to "expert opinions" and reviewers who can't work a real job. When I ordered that cable, the specs were for OFC and as far as I ever knew it was, I'm jusy saying that I saw cable that looked the same used in jumper cables. For al I know, I may have been able to just buy the fancy jumper cable and would never be able to tell any sonic difference an a class-A system. I doubt most people can tell any difference in short runs even if their car system uses high end components. Back when I had the Carvers and the class-a system, I could hear a tiny rasp on a Phil Collins CD that wasnt audible on any other system I could find. It was a snare head in the studio that vibrated when he hit certain keys on a piano.
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