A friend of mine worked as a sound engineer at Abbey Road studios for over 20 years. He told me they use solid copper electric cable. He said all these high end speaker cables are a waste of money.
I think it’s important to know about the works published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. In a nutshell, 12 AWG or 10 AWG copper cable from a quality manufacturer like Belden for a couple bucks per foot is imperceptible from the high dollar cables.
Bruce Morgen - I agree for the most part. I personally would shy away from 20 or 22 gauge especially with lower sensitivity full range speakers but that’s just me.
@@editorjuno lmao I agree cables don't make a damn bit of difference and I use Monoprice, but all I am cringing at is your resistance to spending $30 on 50' of wire and instead tearing apart vacuum cleaner lines. Like, dude.
@@transcribeded -- Cringe away, "dude." 😀 Two snips with a wire cutter isn't exactly "tearing apart" and I certainly didn't need 50', so IMO "waste not, want not" applied at at a time when I was not particularly prosperous. I'm doing better now and can usually find partial spools of brand new speaker wire for a dollar or two at a local thrift store -- the same place where I nabbed a pair of nice little vintage JBLs for $50! 😎
Back in the day when I was using a budget receiver I had always been aware of a hiss, it was only subtle but still very annoying! Well anyway after auditioning several AVRs it became apparent that the hiss was coming from my unshielded cables! Considering I was in a middle of an upgrade I thought I'll start with what was annoying me the most (the hiss coming from the unshielded cables) So I changed my 18- gauge cables for the 14-gauge amazonbasics and even though their was a slight improvement in sound quality the hiss still remained! It was only when I finally purchased shielded cables that the hiss had finally been eliminated! 🥳 Probably because of the aluminium shield protecting the cables from RF/EMI interference! My room is so much quieter now (floor noise) that I can actually start enjoying my movies at lesser volumes.
Gauge is a common unit when talking about circular wires, but what matters is the effective cross sectional area. The ribbon cable mentioned earlier in the video is an example of this. The cable is X mm wide and Y mm tall and that multiplied out gets you the cross sectional area. You can do the same math with each gauge to come up with the area by taking the diameter and performing the Pi x D^2 / 4. That's for solid wire, however, and the effective cross sectional area of stranded wire will be somewhat less due to the spaces between the wire strands not being solid copper. There is something called skin effect that engineers consider at higher frequencies that impacts resistance but this is negligible at audio frequencies. For example, if I have a 10 m long 12 gauge (2.05 mm dia) copper wire, the AC resistance resulting from the skin effect would be about 0.083 ohms at 30 kHz and at 1 kHz it would be about 0.051 ohms, which is basically the DC resistance value. Multi-strand flexible cables typically use annealed copper which has a slightly higher resistivity value versus hard drawn copper but for the 10 m cable the difference is in the hundredths of an ohm. BTW, 12 gauge solid silver wires would have a resistance of about 0.048 ohms for the 10 m length, excluding anything added by connectors on either end. I've seen people talking about $12,000 speaker wires - one could run solid copper bus bars for a fraction of the price 🙂 Let's say your speakers are 8 ohms and you have a 200 RMS watt per channel amplifier. Converting RMS to peak gets you 282.8 watts. That 282.8 watts of delivered peak power is some combination of volts and amps - depends on your amplifier's output circuitry. Watts is volts x amps, so could be 282.8 volts and 1 amp or could be 2.82 volts and 100 amps. Let's say the amplifier has 50 volt output rails (+50 and -50). The peak current at the 282.8 W output would be 282.8 W / 50 V = 5.7 A. With 5.7 A flowing at peak output across the 0.05 ohms of resistance in the 12 gauge speaker cable there would be a resultant 0.29 V drop. So at peak output the speaker would see 49.71 V instead of 50 V. Unless the program material is heavy metal, the percentage of time the amp and speaker are going to see the absolute peak values is going to be pretty low. That means most of the time the peak voltage of the waveform hitting the speaker is going to drive considerably less current through the speaker cable and the IR voltage drop will be correspondingly lower. Bottom line, gauge certainly does matter - to a point. Once you're down below the gauge (lower means larger cross sectional area) that works for your amp speaker combo, anything else is unnecessary dollars going out your pocket. Doesn't matter if they're made from the most holly grail of superconductors, not going to be an audible difference if evaluated in a double blind test over a population of listeners.
16 gauge is adequate for most stereo setups, and that's a very conservative estimate. In reality most people could probably get by with 18 gauge wire with no audible differences running 8 ohm speakers. Copper is getting expensive and there is really no sense in wasting money on thicker cables than what you need.
Speaker impedance and sensitivity play a large role in what to choose . An 84 dB speaker with 4 ohm impedance will require heavier gauge than an 8 ohm speaker with 94 dB sensitivity simply because the former draws much more current at the same volume . Cable company Analysis Plus makes cables in many price ranges and was my choice as a retail customer only .Excellent
I had some crappy 18 awg cheapo speaker wire on my hifi (it's all I could get at the time). Sounded okay too at the time. I then upgraded the wire to 12awg and used banana plugs at both ends and the sound did improve vastly it became richer. So gauge does matter to me lol.
A late friend that used to sell and install audiophile systems tried to explain it to me several times. Good quality is important and Paul makes sense with using different gauges though I don’t know of any. Personally I like heavy gauge fine strand. But I am not an engineer nor claim to be one. In the presence of someone like Paul I would occasionally ask a question and try to absorb his wisdom. I just wish he could went a little further into this topic.
Hi, In relation to the question whether it matters if the speaker enclosure wiring being a thinner gauge than the external cable: The answer is that cable properties like impedance are a function of both length and gauge. Therefore, the short run of thinner cable within the enclosure only has a tiny influence on the electrical properties within the total run length from amp to driver. Therefore, it is unlikely to make a noticeable difference as long as the cable is reasonable. I have been maintaining a church PA for about 30 years. While PA is not HiFi, I think it would be fair to say that in pro PA we at least pay attention to the 1st 1 or 2 most import factors that influence sound quality. There is a general principle of impedance matching in audio. That is, a source device and it's cabling must have a significantly lower impedance than the receiving device. If not, there will be a filtering effect and the sound will have poor bass, clarity and richness. This is not much of a problem for most signal level equipment (except pickups which are high impedance sources) since audio gear tends to be designed with this in mind. However speakers also do not fit this pattern as their dynamic drivers nominal impedance is generally only 4 - 8 ohms. For this reason, Amp output impedance has to be extremely low (hopefully much less than 1% of this) and the speaker cable impedance must also be extremely low as well. A lot of PA occurs in fairly noisy or acoustically poor environments, so as a general rule passive speaker cable will be chosen to be no more than 5% of the load impedance. However, a lot depends on the stability of the gear in question and I personally have set a cable limit of less than 2% of load for our church PA system. The impedance question seems to be a 1st order consideration for choosing twisted strand copper speaker cable. As pointed out in the video, there are other considerations and cable types beyond this, personal taste being one of them. This is probably a reasonable guide in that 2% of load impedance would be a satisfactory 1st base line for most audiophiles, but it is not the only consideration. There are Cable gauge/length impedance charts online but they are based on differing standards and many will lead to mediocre results. If it's important for the cable impedance to be extremely low (thousandths of an ohm), It is important for the connections to be maintained absolutely tight and corrosion free....(use a contact conditioner guys....sigh!) I had an interesting experience with 1 m cable runs into ProAcc EBTs recently. I just used some 18ga cable to make up 1m speaker cables which should have been gross overkill on the impedance issue, but the EBTs sounded harsh when turned up and left me feeling rather jangled after long listening sessions. As and experiment, I swapped in 1m of 14 ga speaker cable and found the sound smooth and relaxed even at high volume, no listening fatigue now. I have to say that from a listening perspective it is hard to say what changed, not harsh anymore certainly and certainly a much more pleasant and relaxing experience but in terms of frequency response, clarity, it's a mystery. Anyway, I like to be able to work from a known good standard such as the impedance charts, it's a good solid foundation and proved itself with the PA and other applications but I have to admit it failed this time. So I am willing to accept there is stuff we don't know and useful as it it, the commonly accepted simple audio engineering theory just doesn't explain everything in all cases. Sure you can set an initial baseline to try and that will possible be OKish but in the end, you just have to experiment and trust your own ears and that can get real expensive. There is a difference between being a technician and being an engineer. My father was chief electrical engineer at a world class electrolytic copper smelter. He said that engineering is the practical application of the scientific method. The modeling is just the tool to establish the initial plant design setup. After which, the process of applied science began, gathering and analyzing experimental data to optimise the performance efficiency of the plant. In other words, the theory does not define the end point, it just gets you the best starting point you can get in order to make a start on the real engineering. This is what many people just don't get.
@@kalijasin You realise that FLUKE is talking about "both stranded and solid cables within the same category (i.e., category 5e, category 6 or category 6A)" .. yeah, that's CAT5e/CAT6/CAT6a ethernet cable. Those things are subjected to signal frequencies up to 417MHz - that's solidly radio wave territory. 98% of effects that appear at those frequencies have no influence whatsoever at 20-20.000Hz which is the audio spectrum.
@Oystein Soreide : With that flimsy cable, you lose something, unless your cables are just 3 feet long. What you lose depends on the construction of your amp and speakers. Most likely, as you don't lose bass level, you lose bass precision (and may even get "more" bass?!) because the speaker feedback dampening by the amp is reduced (feeding impedance high!), so the bass speaker overswings.
I've never understood why high end consumer audio has not moved towards balanced interconnects. Consumers are duped into spending thousands on exotic cables that at best make no difference and at worst degrade the sound when this simple alternative is out there. There is a reason all pro level equipment uses balanced interconnects, there are measurable, objective advantages yet we persist with silly silver strand thousand dollar RCA interconnects.
Just go in-between... Here's a fun little fact from the guitar-world; Some guitarists use the old classic coiled cables, which are actually very thick, to round off the top-end. - I believe Brian May is a particular one who uses it as part of his sound. - So that's what thicker cables do. They might definitely carry more of the signal, but then capacitance will roll off the top-end.
Paul that sounds like the solid vs stranded wire controversy I'm my thinking it's why bi-amping was once so popular My practical experience of problems with wiring and troubleshooting millions of feet in it in my lifetime definitely a preference toward stranded at higher frequency
Thank You. Here is my confusion and it's not so much the cable as it is the ends. If you are going to have a solid (banana or spade) connector at the ends, why is it so important to have a cable that has fine wire that is just the right size? It seems you are adding resistance at both ends time (X) 2, the male and female. It seems as well that with a banana plug in hole in the threaded , you are relying on the point connection of the male and female and the threaded portion you are clamping with. With a spade it's the same. Point contact would seem to defeat the purpose of the fine wire heavy gauge high end cable. Shouldn't you at lease eliminate the connector at the cable end and gain as much potential contact as possible going straight to the device?
What I'm getting as someone building a guitar speaker cabinet is it depends on what tonal characteristics you're looking for from that particular speaker. In my case I was looking to get a clean lowend for the bottom cabinet. The top cabinet is for higher tones. Together they blend nicely giveng me the sound I'm looking to achieve. Clean Bass you can feel and a clean high end that cuts through with scooped mids.
So based on what you said here. If you were to bi-wire a speaker. Would you use a smaller guage cable for the tweeter section? And if so, how much smaller in general?
I can certainly see your point. I dont know if you are familiar with "The Groundhogs" if not they were a classic 1970s power trio. I dug one of their albums out today and I had not heard it for quite a while. Recorded in 1971, very loud and as clear as a bell. Perhaps they should get the old engineers out of retirement to show the current crop of "engineers" how to do it.
The gauge inside almost all amps is 20 gauge and microns on the boards - especially is all modern dac’s. Chain is as strong as its weakest links. Unless you are running 12 gauge inside your amps, it’s useless. High quality tube amps that resonate vs modern tone control will benefit more with higher end external wiring.
Wouldn't it depend on length and current draw? Tweeters dont draw as much as mid bass or subwoofers. So it would make sense to use a smaller size. Thats why bi amping your speakers is the best option if you can. You can use different gauge speaker cables. Smaller gauge for tweeters and larger gauge for mid bass and subwoofers.
Rule of thumb in selecting speaker cable. 1. You will never get good sound with high quality cables and poor quality amplifier. ( i.e ) be more focused on your amplifier than you are of the speaker wires ) 2. For most decent systems , with the speakers no farther than 15 feet away from the amplifier a multi strand oxygen free cable / wire with a gauge of 14 is perfectly fine .if you have to make longer runs use 12 or 10 gauge wires of the same type described above. 3. Don't think too deeply on speaker wires, its not rocket science . Not because your amp is worth $5000 means you need to spend $500 on each speaker cable connected to the amp. If speaker wires was that critical as some people make them out to be the amplifier manufactures would be using them in the amp design . 4. Don't buy " Snake Oil " .
I have 12 awg cable left from a previous project, but have to make really short runs for my new speakers, like 3 - 4 feet per cable... do you think that might be too thick?
Engineers use heavier gauge wire just to handle the load. Longer distances require heavier gauges. So 12 awg might not be necessary for a 3-4 foot distance , for you application but it is fine. Its like using a 5 gallon bucket to carry 1 gallon of water.
For anyone who cares to quantify the differences, a simple copper wire resistance chart provides the actual differences. Most charts give resistance per 1000 feet so divide by 1000 for resistance per foot and multiply by the round trip length for the wire resistance. For example a 4 foot speaker cable is 8 feet of conductor. 12 AWG wire is 1.652 ohms per 1000 feet. Converting is 0.001652 ohms per foot or .01322 ohms. This does not sound like much, however this resistance needs to be calculated with the damping factor of the amplifier as the total resistance is the system damping factor. Damping factor is simply the inverse of the resistance of the amp output. For example an amp with a damping factor of 30 has a resistance of 0.033334. Adding the speaker wire resistance of 0.01322 ohms provides a resistance to speaker damping of 0.046553 ohms or a factor of 21.48 or a loss of almost 1/3 of the damping factor.
When building active speaker systems, I found that the heavier gauge wire worked better for bass but not so well for mids or highs. Conversely, the lighter gauge wire worked better for the high and midrange, but not so well for the bass. Since the active speaker system utilizes three stereo amps, one for each pair of drivers in my three way stereo system, I am able to select speaker wire based upon the need: heavier cable for the bass, lighter wire for the mids and highs.
Paul, going by your logic regarding 'wire guage' vs. 'speaker/driver frequency response', would then a 'pseudo-bi-wired' pair of coaxial cables serve the purpose better, with the thicker inner core wire(s) connected to the mid-bass terminal and the outer thinner wire (mesh) twisted together at the end and connected to the tweeter terminals (assuming the speakers have two pairs of terminals....?
so a thicker wire gets you better bass ? does that mean it's not that important for satellite speakers ? i need to run like 20 feet (7 meters) and apparently i need some pretty thick and expensive stuff for that (relatively)
I agree the quality of the speaker cable is more important than the thickness. However if you purchase lets say Kimber Kable Ascent 4TC cable and compare it to the thicker 8TC cable, one would think with the cable being of the same quality, that the thicker cable would provide a fuller sound. Sort of like a water hose where one hose is better than another.
i bought 16 awg speaker cable for my 1000 watt amp and dual subs for my vehicle.... im redoing it with 12 because it doesnt sound quite right. probably a million reasons why but figured id try the 12 gauge anyway to help me sleep at night
that is just sooooo freakin' cool the High Frequency know to take the light gauge wires and conversely the bass frequencies instinctively take the route of the heavier wire who woulda thought ... ??? NOT ...
It would be interesting, revealing really, to hook a scope on each to see if any difference. But Paul won't do that. He already knows what the result would be.I dare somebody to scope measure a 15 ft run of 14 ga solid and 14 gauge stranded connected in parallel to amp and speaker. And show us the results. You'll need to measure mid cable span because being that they are in parallel the ends are connected together at the amp and speaker.
I’m glad Paul mentioned losing the top end when using a heavier gauge wire, as I would have likely gravitated to a heavier than average cable. 14 may indeed be the sweet spot.
Paul speaks truth here and agree 14 gauge wire is likely the sweet spot, but to a point. I gravitate to bass and the one trick I learned is to use 14 gauge wire, but to have 4 of those wires going to each terminal. The bass response is unbelievable compared to one 14 gauge wire - but, the top end is dampened. Fortunately, the amount of increased bass you get is much greater than the damping at the top. As a result, I was able to tolerate it. With that said, I learned the virtue of bi-wiring (if your speakers permit it) - thin wire for the top end, and 4x14 gauge wire for the bottom. Now, I can have my cake and eat it too :-)
@@Artemis_Prix I guess you believe in the tooth fairy too..... Keep believing in the lie that cables or the other lie, bi-wiring make a difference, they do not!!
@@Deke1 🤣👌I see why you came in here with your great assessment.People’s preferences in certain things have absolutely nothing to do with your miserable life,therefore your negative vibes aren’t warranted in this video.🤷🏻♂️Enjoy life.
Question: Is it better to coil excess speaker cabling or leave it a random mess (rat's nest)? Similarly, is a (power) extension cord at 60 Hz (lower frequency than that of typical audio signal) better uncoiled than coiled, say excess extension cable for yard work? It is understood that unrolled, cut-to-length, separated runs are ideal, but while this scenario is not be deployed.
No need for a rat's nest whatsoever, it's a myth that speaker wire has to be the same length all the way through. That only applies if there is a huge diff in lengths.
From an engineering standpoint, there are 4 important factors in cable material. 1 Resistance. High resistance reduces damping of the speaker. So Larger and Shorter are better. 2 Capacitance. Large diameter conductors have more capacitance. So smaller and shorter are better. 3 Inductance. Diameter has no impact. Woven multi-pair has less inductance. Multi pair and shorter is better. 4 Dielectric Material. This affects both capacitance and absorption. Materials with low absorption and lower dielectric constant is better. So is shorter. The one important factor is length. Size is a balance in engineering. Material of the insulation is important. House wire is not designed to carry high frequencies without loss. Amps located at the speakers or powered speakers is generally best. Speaker wire less than 10 feet is best. Material is only the next important factor to length.
I would have imagined the capacitance to be in the order of nanofarads and given the tolerance on capacitors, negligible in the frequency range of interest (
Jonathan Strum, You are correct the effect is negligible, so is the difference in speaker cables of the same resistance. However this approaches the realm of the differences audiophiles claim to hear between cables. Me personally I use short speaker cables which is nothing special. For commercial applications powered speakers are preferred over traditional amp racks and bi-amp speakers. Well constructed Hozan speaker cables are fine. Amp racks are located near the speakers.
isettech, I was surprised at the difference heavy duty speaker cable made compared to the lightweight stuff we used back in the 1970s. The improvements were in the bass/upper bass region. Changes in the higher frequencies the golden-ears told me would be apparent were inaudible to me. It's entirely possible the cable I purchased was different to what they were using however. I went to a cable supplier and spent ~1% of my total hardware budget on them. Cable length in my case is 3 metres (0.03 ohms and 2.3 µH; capacitance not stated).
Johathan, The 18 AWG clear vinyl stuff was crap that was so popular back then as it showed off the pretty copper inside. The stuff turned the copper green where there was high humidity. Even back then I replaced that with industrial grey wire designed for audio from Belden. A couple lengths of 14AWG made the big difference on a modest 250 Watt system. Even today I have never spent the big bucks on "Audiophile" wire. Shopped by specifications of wire size, capacitance per foot, dielectric material, and sometimes 4 core. We must be about the same age. I graduated HS is 1975 and bought my first good system in Japan while in the Navy. In that time, that was the best. Still enjoying my Yamaha NS1000 speakers. Sold my AR3a's a few years ago. Time didn't treat them well.
I'm a bit older than you; I graduated from secondary school in 1968. I started my hi-fi journey around 1970 building my own speakers using Richard Allan 8 inch full-range drivers fed by an old valve amp (separate pre and power amps). Then I graduated to a decent Kenwood SS amp and AR7 bookshelf speakers. Pursued more bass and SPL with home-built speakers again (SEAS drivers) and a heavily modified 50W/channel kit amplifier. My younger son's best friend now has the speakers and I didn't feel up to renovating the amp a second time when one channel died. Purchased a Rotel integrated amp, nominally 100W/channel, but measured by a friend at better than 150W. They drive a "kit" transmission line system with two 10 inch woofers and a dome tweeter. One of the best speaker systems I've heard and several golden-eared friends have purchased the same or later versions of the same speakers. I put kit in inverted commas. It was a trivial assembly job (3 hours working slow), but saved $AU300 in sales tax because it was a kit. Unless the amp or speakers die, I expect they will last me out. The US navy frequently visits Hobart and until a few years ago, we used to offer R & R to an American sailor. Mostly they were from the mid-west - farm boys - and they really appreciated being on the farm eating decent food for a few days. Good times :-)
Hi there Paul. Happy New Year 2023. Let's hope this new year is much better than 2022 was, right? Paul, thank you so much for your Channel. I learn something new every time that I visit. I genuinely appreciate all that you do, for so many. I need your help in answering a pressing question that I would like to pose to you. The following is that Question: I have 2 Pair of Speakers, so a total of 4 in all. Each of these speakers are rated as having 4 ohm impedance, yet the Receiver/Amplifier that I own is, of course, rated for 8 ohms. My Speakers are, all 4, Polk Audio. I recently killed a Denon Receiver/Amplifier while using on ly 1 Pair of 4 ohm Speakers. I am retired and my income is quite low, so I can't just run out & buy a new receiver/Amplifier. However since the death of my Denon, my only replacement is a Kenwood. Not great but it is all Digital 7.1 Surround Home Theater system w 1875 watts Total Output. I don't want to kill this Kenwood, as I did with my Denon so my question is this: Since each Speaker is rated as 4 ohms, if I were to wire 2 Speakers together, would the receiver/Amplifier see this as one Speaker with an 8 ohm impedance? I know this sounds weak, but monetarily I have little choice right now and as i said I don't want to kill this receiver/amplifier and I'm certain this is what killed my Denon, even though I'd been using the Denon 8 ohm impedance Amplifier with 4 ohm speakers for almost 8 years?! Anyway Paul, I hope that made some sense to you and I can't wait to hear if thi9s would be a safer way to drive these speakers? Thank You for your time and consideration. Keep Smiling... Cheers...
I bought 12 AWG cable to upgrade the 22 AWG I had on my speakers, but it’s too thick to plug in the amplifier and the speakers. What I did was I joined both ends of the 12 AWG cable with around 4 inches of 16 AWG so they could fit. Is that ok? Or should I buy some plugs that make it thinner to fit the output holes and the speakers? I also read that taking out some of the copper strands would be ok for it to fit without damaging the sound, is that true?
Hi Thomas. Linn K20 is directional, according to Linn. I used it between my Audiolab Power amps, 8000M's, and my Tannoy DC3000's, bi-wired, for 30 years, I only changed it about a year ago because it looked extremely grubby. I had them connected up in reverse for several months before discovering I had them the wrong way round when I first got them :). I had the arrow pointing to the speakers, as logic might suggest would be correct, but it was the writing on the cable that should decide orientation, one or the other. I replaced it with two 6m runs of Fisual Havana Quad XL, a generous 10g cable, but a pig to dress, not a massive improvement, but a darn site easier to clean :).
I've been using them all these yrs. not knowing they were directional. They have been disconnected & reconnected without my being aware of the proper direction they were to be connected. It's too late now, the cabinetry was not deep enough to run them without cutting off the banana plugs on that end & the cable being fairly stiff it was my only option. Which is the proper direction? Maybe I got lucky.
@@thomasmoher9089 I'm pretty sure the arrow actually supposed to point toward the amp, most unintuitive. Ironically, considering the fuss made of K20 and NAC 05?, they were basically the same as cables used at fairgrounds to take power to the lightbulbs. I kid you not.
With power, based on Watts and Length. Wire itself has resistance. I'm not an electrical engineer, I'm sure the resistance changes with the temperature. And the frequency being played through it
I just want to make a point about the "wine tasting talk" comment. The artist has the ability to use the worst and best stuff. If it works a rusty guitar, an old tape player, pennies on a drum, recording it in a bloody cave if they like. The point is, that mess, that so called imperfection is planned and wanted to capture a certain feel. Therefore, it takes the clear lense of a good system to capture that, a parallel would be a good camera filming a forest which is kinda a mess, but you need top quality to capture that complex character. In a way, you need real perfection to capture so called imperfection and how it was finally agreed by the artist and technicians as conveying the art.
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Please Paul, if there is one thing in audio you can be definite about it is a freaking speaker cable. it’s not hard to construct a good cable, secondly all aspects to a cable that matters can be measured and thus are objective.
I have used household mains electrical cable as speaker wire. They worked well but only if they were doubled or tripled up. I found the best performance came from wire that was stripped of the outer insulation and rolled up in a combination of two 1 mm square wire with one 4 mm square wire. The result was crispy highs and good body at the bottom end with improved tightness and transients throughout the frequency range. My rule of thumb is for every 1 Ampere of audio signal current, you need 2 mm square of copper wire. Unfortunately the cost of this experiment was higher then a decent 12 gauge low oxygen speaker wire would have been.
"Unfortunately the cost of this experiment was higher then a decent 12 gauge low oxygen speaker wire would have been." Psst! Don't tell anyone this, but I went and looked at the specs for speaker cable from my local supplier and discovered it's _all_ "oxygen-free" (0.001% oxygen content or better). Oddly enough, the oxygen is introduced deliberately because it _improves conductivity_. You have to laugh...
I always keep my speaker cables rolled up neatly in the freezer, they only come out for the listening session, then returned immediately after... this keeps the upper register very crispy...
I just bought 100 feet of 14 gauge oxgen free copper wire for my speakers and I will be running it 25 feet to my surround speakers from my Yamaha HTR-5935 receiver. Did I get the right wire for this? If not I only have today left to return it.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio I HAVE SOMETHING SIMILAR TO THIS. IN A SONY STR DN1060 7.2. AND I BOUGTH MONOPRICE 12 AWG OXIGEN FREE COPPER. BECAUSE THE AMP. TURN HOT BECAUSE I HAD NORMAL AND OLD CABLES FROM THE ANOTHER AMP. IS OK???
I'm using simple, high-quality, finely stranded 12ga copper wire I got from Monoprice and banana terminals from Crutchfield. Works fine for me. Don't need nothing fancy.
Sorry Paul but this time you flew in circles. What about the length vs gauge correlation? What about insulation? Usually you come up with pretty good answers.
Thank you Paul! I'll try to be brief, but, you know me! I've studied Electronics several times, for years, as it interests me, and I can often relate this knowledge to music (reproduction). I'm sure that Paul & his engineers are aware of the following; I am trying to explain this for those not as versed in Electronic Theory. Inductance and capacitance are two of the basic elements in electronics. You, Paul, discuss Capacitors and Capacitance in some of your presentations. Perhaps you have heard the term 'ELI the ICE Man.' (This is long before "Ice, Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice, or the Rap Music artist, Ice Cube, and the movie "Book of Eli" with Denzel Washington!). The 'L' in ELI refers to an Inductor and Inductance. The 'C' in ICE pertains to a Capacitor and Capacitance. The sequence of these letters is important because ELI means that Voltage leads current in a circuit with Inductance, and ICE indicates that Current leads voltage on a capacitive circuit. One day I was told that even a straight wire has - some - Inductance, and Capacitance (as well as resistance). Therefore, the voltage is being shifted ninety degrees ahead of the current in an Inductive circuit (or, conversely, current lags the voltage), and in a predominately Capacitive circuit, current leads the voltage. Is it possible that these 'shifts' may affect the integrity of both the audio AND digital signals? Please don't say, maybe, just a little. Some of us go, to a lot of effort as best we can to achieve as accurate as possible sound reproduction. In a circuit with 'equal' amounts of Inductance and Capacitance, these opposite lead and lag factors cancel out, and you're back in phase, again. A long speaker wire, with each strand encased in some sort of non-conductor, and then the two wires placed next to each other, seems to me to have the potential to have at least a bit of a capacitive effect, and this can lessen or attenuate some of the high frequencies. Could this be at least part of the reason for the perceived roll off in the speaker high frequencies? There are measuring devices for Inductance and Capacitance, as well mas Resistance, of course. Should you seperate each strand of speaker wire (or ribbon) from each other, but keep them at equal length? (Conversely, Inductors tend to oppose, attenuate lower frequencies). Speakers can have a 'Crossover' inside the speaker, to direct the frequencies to the appropriate speaker. If the crossover uses Inductors, Capacitors (and resistors) to achieve this, can this cause some kind of change in phase / phasing, & thereby affect the sound? (This last should be a question to Paul!) I have considered 3 separate amplifiers, designed specifically for each woofer, mid range & tweeter. (There is also an excellent 4 way speaker). Some of my speakers have small indentations in the back of them, with little pins or knobs, to adjust the frequency response.
For some reason I thought electrons flowed on the outside surface of the wire or ribbon and if you increased the surface area for the electrons to flow you increased the signal coming through at the other end, so using a wire strand bundle with lots of fine wires has more surface area than a solid core wire of the same diameter. Is this true or not?
First, its not about gauge its more about materials and design. The listener wrote in, like many other get caught up in gauge and size when it should be about sound quality. You cant buy good quality cables at a department store, you must go to a high end audio store to find the better brands and better made cables. Most high end stores will allow you to take home different cables to fine the ones that complement the sound of the rest of the system. That goes for interconnects, digital cables, and power cables. Simply put them in your system and listen. Also don’t ket price be the determining factor. There are some excellent sounding budget cables “iF” you take the time to try them.
So for a DIY cable, would using say a common orange extension cord work well since it has three fairly high gage conductors. maybe two cables per speaker (three conductors for plus and 3 for minus).
@@ericschulze5641 I ended up geting some of this from this video. pricy compaired with DIY, but it looks great, has nice terminations, and sounds good to my ears ua-cam.com/video/2rjOdEuFe88/v-deo.html
I saw a big difference from going straight bare wire 18g to sure grip banana plugs and 16g and now my Infiniti sm-152 rock better than ever ! Paul what you think of the sm-152s?
Tee-Jay The Stereo-Bargain-File Try 14 or 12 gauge speaker wire. You generally have to go up or down 2 sizes (18 to 14, 16 to 12, etc.) to hear an obvious difference in the sound, particularly on short but loud transient sounds, like drumbeats or handclaps. All the speaker wire in my place is minimum 12 gauge, and some are thicker. Sounds great!
@@ArthaxtaDaVince777 The lower the speakers' sensitivity, the more the size of speaker wire matters. If your speakers are power hungry, going up a couple of sizes like you did is like getting a more powerful amplifier. Have you considered 8 gauge? The only issue is that it won't fit into all brands of connectors. With very sensitive speakers, like Klipsch La Scalas (105 dB/W/m), the difference is less obvious, because less current is flowing, but with any speakers, 14 gauge is a bare minimum, and 12 gauge is even better.
@@nomorokay Yeah and it's not just sensitivity, because a very sensitive speaker like mines (92 db at 8 ohm) can have a very low nominal impedance. My 948s would demand as low as 2.5 ohms at lower frequency, so a thicker cable was a must. I haven't considered 8 gauge but only because I didn't find anything online.
@@ArthaxtaDaVince777 An inexpensive brand of good speaker cable in all sizes is KnuKonceptz. They have several models, but I use Karma Kable SS. The SS stands for Smoke and Silver, because those are its colours. One conductor is covered in grey dielectric and the other one is covered in silver. They’re in twisted pair configuration, which rejects interference, and are covered in a thick clear sheath, which provides both protection and maybe a little more spacing from any wires they’re in contact with. They’re made of oxygen free tinned copper. The tin coating makes them suitable for marine applications, so corrosion will never be an issue. They’re made of hundreds of very fine strands of wire, which makes them very flexible and easy to cut to length with a sharp knife or box cutter. The bigger sizes can be heavy, as you know, so in some applications you might want to support or secure them to avoid tugging on your connectors. My JubScala IIs (Klipsch La Scala IIs with K402 Jubilee tweeters) are bi-amped, so I use 8 gauge for the woofers and 10 gauge for the tweeters. It may be overdoing it with those speakers, but when I’m siting on my sofa enjoying music, I’d rather feel that I overdid it with the speaker wire than underdid it.
Considering how thin the wires are in speaker enclosures, you really shouldn't need anything thicker than 14 or 16 gauge for runs up to 25 feet. I agree with Paul that speakers with thicker wire sound fuller than thin ones based on personal experience.
What is important is that they are of as low impedance (= resistance at audio frequencies) as possible (i.e. shorter, thicker and made of silver if you can afford it. The amplifier is designed to have a low dynamic impedance at the output terminals by taking the negative feedback from this point. Adding resistance after this point allows the wildly varying impedance of the drive units and cross-overs to affect the power output at the speakers over the frequency spectrum. Talk of skin effects at these frequencies is just a way to sell speaker cables.
Silver is a bad idea. While it has the highest conductivity of all metals it is high in oxidation. The sound is different with silver... not sure if that's a good thing or not, just like a highly articulate speaker is not necessarily the best option-- otherwise we'd all be using studio monitors. (which BTW I love... but again not for everyone)
I've found that for an economical 2 conductor 12 or 14 gauge stranded copper cable AKA lamp cord works very well as speaker cable compared to more expensive "pro' speaker wire at the higher price for the same size and specs. in addition to that I've found from years of patching together different combinations of components since ii was a kid that even though they may cost more, some of the so called 'pro speaker cables' have one copper stranded conductor and one aluminum stranded conductor, but to me do not really sound as good and the regular lamp cord from your local home improvement store at about half the price. you can get that any color you want to match your decor or blend i enough to not be noticed easily. I'm into inexpensive but decent quality and hate to pay more that it's worth to me personally. I don't think of y self as and "audiophile as such. so if i have to ask how much it (high end audio equipment) costs I won't bother with it. I don't need it if it cost more than my car.
Should speaker wire always be twisted? Can 12 gauge copper stranded, 12 romex, taken apart and omitting the ground wire, be twisted and a pre twisted pair of solid wire from a cat 5 assembly be all twisted together to have your cake and eat it to..with whipped cream?
I have to run my speaker wires inside the walls of my home theater, the contractor used the industry standard for in-wall application. It's shielded and is not thick like my Monster Cable speaker wires. I couldn't tell any difference between the thick speaker wires and the in-wall thinner wires. Obviously, I could ask them to run my Monster Cable wires in the wall, but I want to stick with the industry standard for in-wall applications.
Speaker cable as thick as the national grid cables - cables used inside a loudspeaker = 1.5 mm off the real cheap shit. It's utter bullshit along with nearly every 'hi-fi' cable.
Hi Paul, Thank you for this video! I’m looking to connect my Yamaha NS-10Ms to a Yamaha P2200 amp. When I heard you say the bigger the gauge the lower the top end I smiled. The original style of NS-10s are known for having an issue with the top end being almost unbearable at times. If you were using this combination, what gauge would you use for the connection?
hey bro i use neotech nevd 2001 digital cable between my cd and my dac .its amazing...also use two pairs of the same cable as interconnectors.also amazing ....because its triaxial cable with pure mono silver in the middle it gives you a "buble"of sound with no stress very musical and very smooth ....enjoy if you can...
@@m.morininvestor9920 what a nonsense! for digital transmission itself there can be no difference at all but optical connections prevent any grounding issues on a physical layer
Please explain to the senior. Can we use NYYHY series power cables for speaker cables? Are there specific differences between the two types of power cables with special speaker cables? Before that, I would like to thank you. I'm from Indonesian
Paul, thanks for the explanation of the loudspeaker cables. From my experience, the thicker the gauge is the better will be the sound. One very important thing which you have not mentioned regarding the cables is their huge impact on the Amplifier's damping factor. The lower is the wiring resistance, the higher is the system damping factor. It goes in the similar way for lower AC and higher AC (skin effect of the wire). The larger is the wire diameter, the greater is the skin which helps higher frequencies and higher harmonics to reach the speaker. The thicker wire reduces as well its resistance for lower frequencies as the pass at their whole diameter area. This enables a better and tight bass (not smeared). Because of the better damping factor, the speaker's diaphragm is less oscillating, damped immediately at the signal stop, especially with "foot drum" (no bbuuuu, but "B"). If someone likes perfection, Litz power wires will do the best job (more skin). Any way thank you for the good explanation.
I improved the sound of my system by running thicker speaker cable from DCSK purchased from Amazon. The sound was fatter, with more bottom end in it. This was compared to the stock cable that came with the speakers.
I guess it depends on the voltage. In the UK we have 240v so at say 100w you're looking at only 0.42A which is nothing! 10AWG cable can handle 20A+ continuous which is like 5000w!
This is all you need to know -- "OFC" is silly to specify, for low frequency electrical conductivity copper is copper -- what matters is the ratio of resistance of the cable (both conductors added together) to the nominal impedance of the speaker. Roger Russell's classic table works if you want to avoid the actual simple math involved. www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#wiretable
I always use one wire gauge higher than is specified. The size of the wire guard you need is determined by the amperage passing through it. There are charts on line that can help you with that. The main reason I go larger is power to the speakers, or wattage, can be lost in the form of heat. Larger guage wire will not be effected as much as smaller guage wire will be. This is because of the way electricity flows through a conductor, called the skin effect. Electricity tends to flow on the outer edge of a conductor, or the surface of that conductor. In this case the outer diameter of a wire. When you have stranded wire vs solid core wire the current has a lot more surface area to travel through, and when you use a larger guage wire, as long as the individual strands of the wire are the same size, you have even more surface area. I like to give my amp every advantage I can to get its signal to the speaker. Now, it's interesting that Paul said they used Romeo, single conductor wire. He said it delivered better bass response, so now he's got me thinking of making a hybrid cable of my own. It's certainly not expensive, and I wonder what it will do when pairs with a good oxygen free multi stranded wire. It's definitely food for thought!
it's called resistance....the higher the resistance of a conductor, the more it will suck, the lower the resistance, the better it will perform, simple...as the wires get longer, the resistance gets bigger, so you need a thicker cable for a longer route, there are some capacitance issues but from my testing, only with expensive audiophile cables, that are made with magic, and therefor they don't care about resistance and capacitance!
Foil wire helps cut down on skin effect at higher frequencies by increasing the surface area that electrons are forced to flow through. Inductors are an integral part of passive crossovers, they are made of long runs of copper coiled up. So the longer the speaker run and the thinner the wire you have, you are lowering the 6db cut off point of your first order low pass filter, aka your speaker wire. 30 feet of 1.3mm wire (16awg straight not coiled) has 17uH of inductance which is roughly a 30khz first order low pass into a 10 ohm load. This is not accounting for skin effect which reduces the wire cross section and lowers the the cut off point more. Speaker wires become important if they are not correctly chosen for the load, but this can be any good copper wire it doesn't have to be 5 bucks a foot.
Skin effect has no effect until you reach into the Higher end VHF frequencies. Speaker cables are essentially a low series resistance into a low impedance. To say otherwise is misleading and dishonest.
'Excellent explanation' That's why I've subscribed, personally in my case using my 10 grade speaker cables when playing music I really can't tell the difference but watching movies at high volume, when the quiet scene comes in that's when I can tell the difference because at times it sounds like I'm sitting underneath a pylon! Lol, you can actually hear the electricity running through the cables! Would love to hear your point of view on that.?
For short runs I use big enough cable to survive the environment it is used in like furniture legs, pets etc. For longer runs what he says supports bi-wiring. Makes me wonder if anybody uses copper tubing for the HF and Romex for the LF ?
Hey Paul. If there is enough difference in speaker cables to be heard by the human ear then there is certainly enough difference to measure with test equipment (scopes). Show us. Yes there is some difference in different construction and composition. But you completely omit very important characteristics.The things you omit in these videos are so obvious to electronics engineers. It is so exposing of you.
No of course they don't because it's nonsense. The equipment these people play their music on was developed using measuring equipment they say cannot measure the differences in cables they say their ears can detect. Even laymen without any qualifications of any kind in electronic engineering can probably see the obvious difficulty this raises with the whole "it cannot be measured" nonsense.
Why does everyone in these threads expect a 3hr Symposium for each basic question? And I agree with Paul. Bigger Is Better. Especially with lower powered equipment.
Thanks for the video.. I actually like to know that what we use a heavier gauge cable for light speakers ? Will there be dullness nd loss?? Let me know if it is..
That is the experience I've made by putting thicker cables of 2,5 mm of gauge on a small Yamaha Piano Craft e810 audio equipment. There was definitely more dullness compared to the original thinner cables. Instruments definitely came across less differentiated. So I went back to the original thinner cables.
Ok, Ok You had 10 gage Romex, and lack the top frequencies. The cable is transporting AC, the signal to the speaker. The conductors are close together and perhaps 10F long. This can create a capacitance which will attenuate the high frequencies. Try separating the conductors. But if you use your senses and not going the scientific way with test equipment is not a meaningful way to be an advisor to the unsuspected public
you need bigger cables only if the internal resistance of your power amp is very very low like 0.05 ohm . but if your amp has a 0.5 ohm resistance the width of the cable allmost wont make a difference
It's all about how much power you are trying to drive... a typical home theater system is fine with 16 or 14 gauge ...When I worked in the pro audio/touring world where we were putting 1500 watts to double 18" cabinets we'd be down to 10 gauge...
Isn't this simply only down to the electrical resistance? As long as the cable doesn't have too much of a capacitive effect, the only difference should be the absolute impedance your receiver sees. I can't imagine that the crystalline structure of the copper has any impact at all, or even using pure silver.
I hear a bunch of comments about how bi-wiring is just a waste of time and bragging points only. If you are saying that thick cables accentuate the low end while thinner ones to the same for the upper register, is there a point to be made that maybe you should bi-wire using two different gauge wires?
I find it interesting that the people who recorded the music we all listen to don't seem to spend anywhere near as much time agonizing over cables : they need long runs and they need reliability. www.mogamicable.com/ I'm sure they sell heavy gauge cables, and dealers will almost certainly cut your cables to specification. Those wanting 10K USD per foot cables probably need to look elsewhere,
I had to laugh given top-shelf system: preamp, CD transport,DAC, amp, interconnects, speaker cables etc. which are hooked up to speakers in the price range of say 5 to 8 grand and more. Those speaker's connector posts when opened up often reveal two very thin cheap looking wires going into the cross over. So what is the point in spending all those thousands when at the speaker the signal that so lovingly built form those expensive components goes into 5 and dime wire to power the drivers it makes no sense?
Some people re-wire their speakers with heavier wire, or even go as far as using silver plated wire. But it's pointless, as the bulk of the resistance in the system is in the driver voice coils, and no one can rewire those to get rid of it. (Although if a system omits passive crossovers and drivers connect directly to a dedicated amplifier, then the amplifier can be designed to compensate for the voice coil resistance.)
The wires are probably cheap but that short distance of smaller gauge wire should usually be able transfer enough power and keep resistance to a minimum
So maybe I messed up. I thought all that was important was the gauge so I went to Home Depot to buy 12 gauge wire because it was cheaper than getting wire at a stereo shop and I thought I was smart. But now you are staying the material matters also so I guess I was not so smart as I thought.
A friend of mine worked as a sound engineer at Abbey Road studios for over 20 years. He told me they use solid copper electric cable. He said all these high end speaker cables are a waste of money.
Om bw 801 thats wast off speaker
My man removed his glasses and I knew shit was about to go down
I think it’s important to know about the works published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. In a nutshell, 12 AWG or 10 AWG copper cable from a quality manufacturer like Belden for a couple bucks per foot is imperceptible from the high dollar cables.
...and, for the usual 6-10 foot speaker cable lengths need for home stereo systems, 18 or 20 or even 22 AWG cable is just fine too.
Bruce Morgen - I agree for the most part. I personally would shy away from 20 or 22 gauge especially with lower sensitivity full range speakers but that’s just me.
@@petersouthernboy6327 -- I usually use jacketed 18/2 AWG power cords harvested from defunct vacuum cleaners.
Cringe away, audiophiles! :-)
@@editorjuno lmao I agree cables don't make a damn bit of difference and I use Monoprice, but all I am cringing at is your resistance to spending $30 on 50' of wire and instead tearing apart vacuum cleaner lines. Like, dude.
@@transcribeded -- Cringe away, "dude." 😀
Two snips with a wire cutter isn't exactly "tearing apart" and I certainly didn't need 50', so IMO "waste not, want not" applied at at a time when I was not particularly prosperous. I'm doing better now and can usually find partial spools of brand new speaker wire for a dollar or two at a local thrift store -- the same place where I nabbed a pair of nice little vintage JBLs for $50! 😎
Back in the day when I was using a budget receiver I had always been aware of a hiss, it was only subtle but still very annoying! Well anyway after auditioning several AVRs it became apparent that the hiss was coming from my unshielded cables! Considering I was in a middle of an upgrade I thought I'll start with what was annoying me the most (the hiss coming from the unshielded cables) So I changed my 18- gauge cables for the 14-gauge amazonbasics and even though their was a slight improvement in sound quality the hiss still remained! It was only when I finally purchased shielded cables that the hiss had finally been eliminated! 🥳 Probably because of the aluminium shield protecting the cables from RF/EMI interference! My room is so much quieter now (floor noise) that I can actually start enjoying my movies at lesser volumes.
Gauge is a common unit when talking about circular wires, but what matters is the effective cross sectional area. The ribbon cable mentioned earlier in the video is an example of this. The cable is X mm wide and Y mm tall and that multiplied out gets you the cross sectional area. You can do the same math with each gauge to come up with the area by taking the diameter and performing the Pi x D^2 / 4.
That's for solid wire, however, and the effective cross sectional area of stranded wire will be somewhat less due to the spaces between the wire strands not being solid copper.
There is something called skin effect that engineers consider at higher frequencies that impacts resistance but this is negligible at audio frequencies. For example, if I have a 10 m long 12 gauge (2.05 mm dia) copper wire, the AC resistance resulting from the skin effect would be about 0.083 ohms at 30 kHz and at 1 kHz it would be about 0.051 ohms, which is basically the DC resistance value.
Multi-strand flexible cables typically use annealed copper which has a slightly higher resistivity value versus hard drawn copper but for the 10 m cable the difference is in the hundredths of an ohm.
BTW, 12 gauge solid silver wires would have a resistance of about 0.048 ohms for the 10 m length, excluding anything added by connectors on either end.
I've seen people talking about $12,000 speaker wires - one could run solid copper bus bars for a fraction of the price 🙂
Let's say your speakers are 8 ohms and you have a 200 RMS watt per channel amplifier. Converting RMS to peak gets you 282.8 watts. That 282.8 watts of delivered peak power is some combination of volts and amps - depends on your amplifier's output circuitry. Watts is volts x amps, so could be 282.8 volts and 1 amp or could be 2.82 volts and 100 amps. Let's say the amplifier has 50 volt output rails (+50 and -50). The peak current at the 282.8 W output would be 282.8 W / 50 V = 5.7 A.
With 5.7 A flowing at peak output across the 0.05 ohms of resistance in the 12 gauge speaker cable there would be a resultant 0.29 V drop. So at peak output the speaker would see 49.71 V instead of 50 V.
Unless the program material is heavy metal, the percentage of time the amp and speaker are going to see the absolute peak values is going to be pretty low. That means most of the time the peak voltage of the waveform hitting the speaker is going to drive considerably less current through the speaker cable and the IR voltage drop will be correspondingly lower.
Bottom line, gauge certainly does matter - to a point. Once you're down below the gauge (lower means larger cross sectional area) that works for your amp speaker combo, anything else is unnecessary dollars going out your pocket. Doesn't matter if they're made from the most holly grail of superconductors, not going to be an audible difference if evaluated in a double blind test over a population of listeners.
Excellent comment, thanks for that.
16 gauge is adequate for most stereo setups, and that's a very conservative estimate. In reality most people could probably get by with 18 gauge wire with no audible differences running 8 ohm speakers.
Copper is getting expensive and there is really no sense in wasting money on thicker cables than what you need.
Speaker impedance and sensitivity play a large role in what to choose . An 84 dB speaker with 4 ohm impedance will require heavier gauge than an 8 ohm speaker with 94 dB sensitivity simply because the former draws much more current at the same volume . Cable company Analysis Plus makes cables in many price ranges and was my choice as a retail customer only .Excellent
From an audio standpoint, that transition @1:51 was a thing of beauty.
1:50, also from video standpoint pretty bad XD
I had some crappy 18 awg cheapo speaker wire on my hifi (it's all I could get at the time). Sounded okay too at the time.
I then upgraded the wire to 12awg and used banana plugs at both ends and the sound did improve vastly it became richer.
So gauge does matter to me lol.
A late friend that used to sell and install audiophile systems tried to explain it to me several times. Good quality is important and Paul makes sense with using different gauges though I don’t know of any. Personally I like heavy gauge fine strand. But I am not an engineer nor claim to be one. In the presence of someone like Paul I would occasionally ask a question and try to absorb his wisdom. I just wish he could went a little further into this topic.
If you're biwiring, could you use thinner cable for the tweeter and thicker for the bass?
Hi, In relation to the question whether it matters if the speaker enclosure wiring being a thinner gauge than the external cable: The answer is that cable properties like impedance are a function of both length and gauge. Therefore, the short run of thinner cable within the enclosure only has a tiny influence on the electrical properties within the total run length from amp to driver. Therefore, it is unlikely to make a noticeable difference as long as the cable is reasonable. I have been maintaining a church PA for about 30 years. While PA is not HiFi, I think it would be fair to say that in pro PA we at least pay attention to the 1st 1 or 2 most import factors that influence sound quality. There is a general principle of impedance matching in audio. That is, a source device and it's cabling must have a significantly lower impedance than the receiving device. If not, there will be a filtering effect and the sound will have poor bass, clarity and richness. This is not much of a problem for most signal level equipment (except pickups which are high impedance sources) since audio gear tends to be designed with this in mind. However speakers also do not fit this pattern as their dynamic drivers nominal impedance is generally only 4 - 8 ohms. For this reason, Amp output impedance has to be extremely low (hopefully much less than 1% of this) and the speaker cable impedance must also be extremely low as well. A lot of PA occurs in fairly noisy or acoustically poor environments, so as a general rule passive speaker cable will be chosen to be no more than 5% of the load impedance. However, a lot depends on the stability of the gear in question and I personally have set a cable limit of less than 2% of load for our church PA system. The impedance question seems to be a 1st order consideration for choosing twisted strand copper speaker cable. As pointed out in the video, there are other considerations and cable types beyond this, personal taste being one of them. This is probably a reasonable guide in that 2% of load impedance would be a satisfactory 1st base line for most audiophiles, but it is not the only consideration. There are Cable gauge/length impedance charts online but they are based on differing standards and many will lead to mediocre results. If it's important for the cable impedance to be extremely low (thousandths of an ohm), It is important for the connections to be maintained absolutely tight and corrosion free....(use a contact conditioner guys....sigh!) I had an interesting experience with 1 m cable runs into ProAcc EBTs recently. I just used some 18ga cable to make up 1m speaker cables which should have been gross overkill on the impedance issue, but the EBTs sounded harsh when turned up and left me feeling rather jangled after long listening sessions. As and experiment, I swapped in 1m of 14 ga speaker cable and found the sound smooth and relaxed even at high volume, no listening fatigue now. I have to say that from a listening perspective it is hard to say what changed, not harsh anymore certainly and certainly a much more pleasant and relaxing experience but in terms of frequency response, clarity, it's a mystery. Anyway, I like to be able to work from a known good standard such as the impedance charts, it's a good solid foundation and proved itself with the PA and other applications but I have to admit it failed this time. So I am willing to accept there is stuff we don't know and useful as it it, the commonly accepted simple audio engineering theory just doesn't explain everything in all cases. Sure you can set an initial baseline to try and that will possible be OKish but in the end, you just have to experiment and trust your own ears and that can get real expensive.
There is a difference between being a technician and being an engineer. My father was chief electrical engineer at a world class electrolytic copper smelter. He said that engineering is the practical application of the scientific method. The modeling is just the tool to establish the initial plant design setup. After which, the process of applied science began, gathering and analyzing experimental data to optimise the performance efficiency of the plant. In other words, the theory does not define the end point, it just gets you the best starting point you can get in order to make a start on the real engineering. This is what many people just don't get.
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This gave me some good info and makes me proud of my mechanical/technical ability. Hats off to yer Pop for the wise words and to you for sharing em.
I'm now using 14 awg single strand cable, and it works very nicely. good high end details, and no lack of bass.
"stranded cables exhibit 20 - 50% more attenuation than solid copper conductors."
www.flukenetworks.com/blog/cabling-chronicles/considerations-choosing-stranded-vs-solid-cable
@@kalijasin You realise that FLUKE is talking about "both stranded and solid cables within the same category (i.e., category 5e, category 6 or category 6A)" .. yeah, that's CAT5e/CAT6/CAT6a ethernet cable. Those things are subjected to signal frequencies up to 417MHz - that's solidly radio wave territory. 98% of effects that appear at those frequencies have no influence whatsoever at 20-20.000Hz which is the audio spectrum.
@Oystein Soreide : With that flimsy cable, you lose something, unless your cables are just 3 feet long. What you lose depends on the construction of your amp and speakers. Most likely, as you don't lose bass level, you lose bass precision (and may even get "more" bass?!) because the speaker feedback dampening by the amp is reduced (feeding impedance high!), so the bass speaker overswings.
@@memyshelfandeye318 i have 5 feet cable. And the damping factor of my amplifier is 4000. So i'm not getting sloppy bass.
I've never understood why high end consumer audio has not moved towards balanced interconnects. Consumers are duped into spending thousands on exotic cables that at best make no difference and at worst degrade the sound when this simple alternative is out there.
There is a reason all pro level equipment uses balanced interconnects, there are measurable, objective advantages yet we persist with silly silver strand thousand dollar RCA interconnects.
Most high end hi-fi equipment has balanced input connectors on them.
Just go in-between... Here's a fun little fact from the guitar-world; Some guitarists use the old classic coiled cables, which are actually very thick, to round off the top-end. - I believe Brian May is a particular one who uses it as part of his sound. - So that's what thicker cables do. They might definitely carry more of the signal, but then capacitance will roll off the top-end.
Paul that sounds like the solid vs stranded wire controversy
I'm my thinking it's why bi-amping was once so popular
My practical experience of problems with wiring and troubleshooting millions of feet in it in my lifetime definitely a preference toward stranded at higher frequency
Thank You. Here is my confusion and it's not so much the cable as it is the ends. If you are going to have a solid (banana or spade) connector at the ends, why is it so important to have a cable that has fine wire that is just the right size? It seems you are adding resistance at both ends time (X) 2, the male and female. It seems as well that with a banana plug in hole in the threaded , you are relying on the point connection of the male and female and the threaded portion you are clamping with. With a spade it's the same. Point contact would seem to defeat the purpose of the fine wire heavy gauge high end cable. Shouldn't you at lease eliminate the connector at the cable end and gain as much potential contact as possible going straight to the device?
What I'm getting as someone building a guitar speaker cabinet is it depends on what tonal characteristics you're looking for from that particular speaker. In my case I was looking to get a clean lowend for the bottom cabinet. The top cabinet is for higher tones. Together they blend nicely giveng me the sound I'm looking to achieve. Clean Bass you can feel and a clean high end that cuts through with scooped mids.
Is it okay to put some solder at the tips of speaker wire to keep the copper strands from fraying and breaking?
So based on what you said here. If you were to bi-wire a speaker. Would you use a smaller guage cable for the tweeter section? And if so, how much smaller in general?
I can certainly see your point. I dont know if you are familiar with "The Groundhogs" if not they were a classic 1970s power trio. I dug one of their albums out today and I had not heard it for quite a while. Recorded in 1971, very loud and as clear as a bell. Perhaps they should get the old engineers out of retirement to show the current crop of "engineers" how to do it.
Thank Christ for the Bomb :-)
The gauge inside almost all amps is 20 gauge and microns on the boards - especially is all modern dac’s. Chain is as strong as its weakest links. Unless you are running 12 gauge inside your amps, it’s useless.
High quality tube amps that resonate vs modern tone control will benefit more with higher end external wiring.
Paul, can we use copper power cable (just as we use in electrical fittings in our homes) of suitable gauge as amp to speaker cable.
would romex be better than regular speaker wire???????
Wouldn't it depend on length and current draw? Tweeters dont draw as much as mid bass or subwoofers. So it would make sense to use a smaller size. Thats why bi amping your speakers is the best option if you can. You can use different gauge speaker cables. Smaller gauge for tweeters and larger gauge for mid bass and subwoofers.
Rule of thumb in selecting speaker cable.
1. You will never get good sound with high quality cables and poor quality amplifier. ( i.e ) be more focused on your amplifier than you are of the speaker wires )
2. For most decent systems , with the speakers no farther than 15 feet away from the amplifier a multi strand oxygen free cable / wire with a gauge of 14 is perfectly fine .if you have to make longer runs use 12 or 10 gauge wires of the same type described above.
3. Don't think too deeply on speaker wires, its not rocket science . Not because your amp is worth $5000 means you need to spend $500 on each speaker cable connected to the amp. If speaker wires was that critical as some people make them out to be the amplifier manufactures would be using them in the amp design .
4. Don't buy " Snake Oil " .
That sounds reasonable.
I have 12 awg cable left from a previous project, but have to make really short runs for my new speakers, like 3 - 4 feet per cable... do you think that might be too thick?
Engineers use heavier gauge wire just to handle the load. Longer distances require heavier gauges. So 12 awg might not be necessary for a 3-4 foot distance , for you application but it is fine. Its like using a 5 gallon bucket to carry 1 gallon of water.
Daniel Macías Too heavy is not an issue.. 12awg is not an issue.. Use it!!
For anyone who cares to quantify the differences, a simple copper wire resistance chart provides the actual differences. Most charts give resistance per 1000 feet so divide by 1000 for resistance per foot and multiply by the round trip length for the wire resistance. For example a 4 foot speaker cable is 8 feet of conductor. 12 AWG wire is 1.652 ohms per 1000 feet. Converting is 0.001652 ohms per foot or .01322 ohms. This does not sound like much, however this resistance needs to be calculated with the damping factor of the amplifier as the total resistance is the system damping factor. Damping factor is simply the inverse of the resistance of the amp output. For example an amp with a damping factor of 30 has a resistance of 0.033334. Adding the speaker wire resistance of 0.01322 ohms provides a resistance to speaker damping of 0.046553 ohms or a factor of 21.48 or a loss of almost 1/3 of the damping factor.
Hi Paul,what gauge cable do you recommend to use from a passive crossover to speakers...thanks
When building active speaker systems, I found that the heavier gauge wire worked better for bass but not so well for mids or highs. Conversely, the lighter gauge wire worked better for the high and midrange, but not so well for the bass. Since the active speaker system utilizes three stereo amps, one for each pair of drivers in my three way stereo system, I am able to select speaker wire based upon the need: heavier cable for the bass, lighter wire for the mids and highs.
ekim andersom He can't..
He can you know. _Tell_ you he can hear the difference :-)
Myth. The ONLY reason to use lighter gauge wiring is because you are moving less power to the mids and tweeters.
Larry Niles I am 101% sure you can’t. Go study some basic science. Don’t listen to bullshit people like Paul. Trust me, I’m helping you.
Paul, going by your logic regarding 'wire guage' vs. 'speaker/driver frequency response', would then a 'pseudo-bi-wired' pair of coaxial cables serve the purpose better, with the thicker inner core wire(s) connected to the mid-bass terminal and the outer thinner wire (mesh) twisted together at the end and connected to the tweeter terminals (assuming the speakers have two pairs of terminals....?
so a thicker wire gets you better bass ? does that mean it's not that important for satellite speakers ? i need to run like 20 feet (7 meters) and apparently i need some pretty thick and expensive stuff for that (relatively)
I agree the quality of the speaker cable is more important than the thickness. However if you purchase lets say Kimber Kable Ascent 4TC cable and compare it to the thicker 8TC cable, one would think with the cable being of the same quality, that the thicker cable would provide a fuller sound. Sort of like a water hose where one hose is better than another.
Can you hear it in a DBT? If not don't waste your money. Do you use DB testing? If not, why not?
thank you
paul....why is there sound an how did sound become?
i bought 16 awg speaker cable for my 1000 watt amp and dual subs for my vehicle.... im redoing it with 12 because it doesnt sound quite right. probably a million reasons why but figured id try the 12 gauge anyway to help me sleep at night
that is just sooooo freakin' cool
the High Frequency know to take the light gauge wires
and conversely
the bass frequencies instinctively take the route of the heavier wire
who woulda thought ... ???
NOT ...
It would be interesting, revealing really, to hook a scope on each to see if any difference. But Paul won't do that. He already knows what the result would be.I dare somebody to scope measure a 15 ft run of 14 ga solid and 14 gauge stranded connected in parallel to amp and speaker. And show us the results. You'll need to measure mid cable span because being that they are in parallel the ends are connected together at the amp and speaker.
C'mon man, think about it...a thermos keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold.....
How does it know ??
I’m glad Paul mentioned losing the top end when using a heavier gauge wire, as I would have likely gravitated to a heavier than average cable. 14 may indeed be the sweet spot.
Paul speaks truth here and agree 14 gauge wire is likely the sweet spot, but to a point. I gravitate to bass and the one trick I learned is to use 14 gauge wire, but to have 4 of those wires going to each terminal. The bass response is unbelievable compared to one 14 gauge wire - but, the top end is dampened. Fortunately, the amount of increased bass you get is much greater than the damping at the top. As a result, I was able to tolerate it. With that said, I learned the virtue of bi-wiring (if your speakers permit it) - thin wire for the top end, and 4x14 gauge wire for the bottom. Now, I can have my cake and eat it too :-)
@@Artemis_Prix I guess you believe in the tooth fairy too..... Keep believing in the lie that cables or the other lie, bi-wiring make a difference, they do not!!
@@Deke1 🤣👌I see why you came in here with your great assessment.People’s preferences in certain things have absolutely nothing to do with your miserable life,therefore your negative vibes aren’t warranted in this video.🤷🏻♂️Enjoy life.
@@lr5081 They're called FACTS, not assessments, cupcake!
Cables only take away. They don’t add to anything. You have the signal and it either degrades it or keeps it intact.
Question: Is it better to coil excess speaker cabling or leave it a random mess (rat's nest)? Similarly, is a (power) extension cord at 60 Hz (lower frequency than that of typical audio signal) better uncoiled than coiled, say excess extension cable for yard work? It is understood that unrolled, cut-to-length, separated runs are ideal, but while this scenario is not be deployed.
No need for a rat's nest whatsoever, it's a myth that speaker wire has to be the same length all the way through. That only applies if there is a huge diff in lengths.
From an engineering standpoint, there are 4 important factors in cable material.
1 Resistance. High resistance reduces damping of the speaker. So Larger and Shorter are better.
2 Capacitance. Large diameter conductors have more capacitance. So smaller and shorter are better.
3 Inductance. Diameter has no impact. Woven multi-pair has less inductance. Multi pair and shorter is better.
4 Dielectric Material. This affects both capacitance and absorption. Materials with low absorption and lower dielectric constant is better. So is shorter.
The one important factor is length. Size is a balance in engineering. Material of the insulation is important. House wire is not designed to carry high frequencies without loss.
Amps located at the speakers or powered speakers is generally best. Speaker wire less than 10 feet is best. Material is only the next important factor to length.
I would have imagined the capacitance to be in the order of nanofarads and given the tolerance on capacitors, negligible in the frequency range of interest (
Jonathan Strum, You are correct the effect is negligible, so is the difference in speaker cables of the same resistance. However this approaches the realm of the differences audiophiles claim to hear between cables. Me personally I use short speaker cables which is nothing special. For commercial applications powered speakers are preferred over traditional amp racks and bi-amp speakers. Well constructed Hozan speaker cables are fine. Amp racks are located near the speakers.
isettech, I was surprised at the difference heavy duty speaker cable made compared to the lightweight stuff we used back in the 1970s. The improvements were in the bass/upper bass region. Changes in the higher frequencies the golden-ears told me would be apparent were inaudible to me. It's entirely possible the cable I purchased was different to what they were using however. I went to a cable supplier and spent ~1% of my total hardware budget on them. Cable length in my case is 3 metres (0.03 ohms and 2.3 µH; capacitance not stated).
Johathan, The 18 AWG clear vinyl stuff was crap that was so popular back then as it showed off the pretty copper inside. The stuff turned the copper green where there was high humidity. Even back then I replaced that with industrial grey wire designed for audio from Belden. A couple lengths of 14AWG made the big difference on a modest 250 Watt system. Even today I have never spent the big bucks on "Audiophile" wire. Shopped by specifications of wire size, capacitance per foot, dielectric material, and sometimes 4 core.
We must be about the same age. I graduated HS is 1975 and bought my first good system in Japan while in the Navy. In that time, that was the best. Still enjoying my Yamaha NS1000 speakers. Sold my AR3a's a few years ago. Time didn't treat them well.
I'm a bit older than you; I graduated from secondary school in 1968. I started my hi-fi journey around 1970 building my own speakers using Richard Allan 8 inch full-range drivers fed by an old valve amp (separate pre and power amps). Then I graduated to a decent Kenwood SS amp and AR7 bookshelf speakers. Pursued more bass and SPL with home-built speakers again (SEAS drivers) and a heavily modified 50W/channel kit amplifier. My younger son's best friend now has the speakers and I didn't feel up to renovating the amp a second time when one channel died. Purchased a Rotel integrated amp, nominally 100W/channel, but measured by a friend at better than 150W. They drive a "kit" transmission line system with two 10 inch woofers and a dome tweeter. One of the best speaker systems I've heard and several golden-eared friends have purchased the same or later versions of the same speakers. I put kit in inverted commas. It was a trivial assembly job (3 hours working slow), but saved $AU300 in sales tax because it was a kit. Unless the amp or speakers die, I expect they will last me out.
The US navy frequently visits Hobart and until a few years ago, we used to offer R & R to an American sailor. Mostly they were from the mid-west - farm boys - and they really appreciated being on the farm eating decent food for a few days. Good times :-)
Hi there Paul. Happy New Year 2023. Let's hope this new year is much better than 2022 was, right? Paul, thank you so much for your Channel. I learn something new every time that I visit. I genuinely appreciate all that you do, for so many. I need your help in answering a pressing question that I would like to pose to you. The following is that Question:
I have 2 Pair of Speakers, so a total of 4 in all. Each of these speakers are rated as having 4 ohm impedance, yet the Receiver/Amplifier that I own is, of course, rated for 8 ohms. My Speakers are, all 4, Polk Audio. I recently killed a Denon Receiver/Amplifier while using on ly 1 Pair of 4 ohm Speakers. I am retired and my income is quite low, so I can't just run out & buy a new receiver/Amplifier. However since the death of my Denon, my only replacement is a Kenwood. Not great but it is all Digital 7.1 Surround Home Theater system w 1875 watts Total Output. I don't want to kill this Kenwood, as I did with my Denon so my question is this: Since each Speaker is rated as 4 ohms, if I were to wire 2 Speakers together, would the receiver/Amplifier see this as one Speaker with an 8 ohm impedance? I know this sounds weak, but monetarily I have little choice right now and as i said I don't want to kill this receiver/amplifier and I'm certain this is what killed my Denon, even though I'd been using the Denon 8 ohm impedance Amplifier with 4 ohm speakers for almost 8 years?!
Anyway Paul, I hope that made some sense to you and I can't wait to hear if thi9s would be a safer way to drive these speakers? Thank You for your time and consideration. Keep Smiling... Cheers...
I bought 12 AWG cable to upgrade the 22 AWG I had on my speakers, but it’s too thick to plug in the amplifier and the speakers. What I did was I joined both ends of the 12 AWG cable with around 4 inches of 16 AWG so they could fit. Is that ok? Or should I buy some plugs that make it thinner to fit the output holes and the speakers? I also read that taking out some of the copper strands would be ok for it to fit without damaging the sound, is that true?
Sure; not a problem.
The signal travels on the outside of each strand. So speakers like not only bigger gauge wire, but also more strands.
For HIGH-frequency, there is a little "skin effect", nothing you'd need to spend big money on worrying about it.
Paul, I was given a set of Linn K20 speaker cables yrs. ago. I was just recently reading that they are directional, is this just a bunch of malarkey?
Hi Thomas. Linn K20 is directional, according to Linn. I used it between my Audiolab Power amps, 8000M's, and my Tannoy DC3000's, bi-wired, for 30 years, I only changed it about a year ago because it looked extremely grubby. I had them connected up in reverse for several months before discovering I had them the wrong way round when I first got them :). I had the arrow pointing to the speakers, as logic might suggest would be correct, but it was the writing on the cable that should decide orientation, one or the other.
I replaced it with two 6m runs of Fisual Havana Quad XL, a generous 10g cable, but a pig to dress, not a massive improvement, but a darn site easier to clean :).
I've been using them all these yrs. not knowing they were directional. They have been disconnected & reconnected without my being aware of the proper direction they were to be connected. It's too late now, the cabinetry was not deep enough to run them without cutting off the banana plugs on that end & the cable being fairly stiff it was my only option. Which is the proper direction? Maybe I got lucky.
@@thomasmoher9089 I'm pretty sure the arrow actually supposed to point toward the amp, most unintuitive. Ironically, considering the fuss made of K20 and NAC 05?, they were basically the same as cables used at fairgrounds to take power to the lightbulbs. I kid you not.
With power, based on Watts and Length. Wire itself has resistance. I'm not an electrical engineer, I'm sure the resistance changes with the temperature. And the frequency being played through it
I just want to make a point about the "wine tasting talk" comment. The artist has the ability to use the worst and best stuff. If it works a rusty guitar, an old tape player, pennies on a drum, recording it in a bloody cave if they like. The point is, that mess, that so called imperfection is planned and wanted to capture a certain feel. Therefore, it takes the clear lense of a good system to capture that, a parallel would be a good camera filming a forest which is kinda a mess, but you need top quality to capture that complex character. In a way, you need real perfection to capture so called imperfection and how it was finally agreed by the artist and technicians as conveying the art.
Crap
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Please Paul, if there is one thing in audio you can be definite about it is a freaking speaker cable. it’s not hard to construct a good cable, secondly all aspects to a cable that matters can be measured and thus are objective.
Only questions is - WHAT do you measure, and can you measure it precise enough?
Bro, if you go to the PS Audio website they're literally selling a cable priced at $21K. To say he might be a little biased is an understatement.
I have used household mains electrical cable as speaker wire. They worked well but only if they were doubled or tripled up. I found the best performance came from wire that was stripped of the outer insulation and rolled up in a combination of two 1 mm square wire with one 4 mm square wire. The result was crispy highs and good body at the bottom end with improved tightness and transients throughout the frequency range. My rule of thumb is for every 1 Ampere of audio signal current, you need 2 mm square of copper wire. Unfortunately the cost of this experiment was higher then a decent 12 gauge low oxygen speaker wire would have been.
"Unfortunately the cost of this experiment was higher then a decent 12 gauge low oxygen speaker wire would have been."
Psst! Don't tell anyone this, but I went and looked at the specs for speaker cable from my local supplier and discovered it's _all_ "oxygen-free" (0.001% oxygen content or better). Oddly enough, the oxygen is introduced deliberately because it _improves conductivity_. You have to laugh...
I always keep my speaker cables rolled up neatly in the freezer, they only come out for the listening session, then returned immediately after... this keeps the upper register very crispy...
@@poserwannabe1 But surely being in the freezer makes them brittle. And if you warm them up so they don't crack, they wouldn't be crispy any more...
@@jonathansturm4163 hahaha I just love this stuff..
@@poserwannabe1 I agree; it's great fun. Fine example of the adage that people take far too seriously what the gods intended to be fun :-)
What gauge of wire is used inside of the cabinet?
I just bought 100 feet of 14 gauge oxgen free copper wire for my speakers and I will be running it 25 feet to my surround speakers from my Yamaha HTR-5935 receiver. Did I get the right wire for this? If not I only have today left to return it.
That should be fine.
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio Thank you so much for the response and help!!!!!
@@Paulmcgowanpsaudio I HAVE SOMETHING SIMILAR TO THIS. IN A SONY STR DN1060 7.2. AND I BOUGTH MONOPRICE 12 AWG OXIGEN FREE COPPER. BECAUSE THE AMP. TURN HOT BECAUSE I HAD NORMAL AND OLD CABLES FROM THE ANOTHER AMP.
IS OK???
Maybe you can put different gauge wires on a selector switch and use it as a tone control.....
I'm using simple, high-quality, finely stranded 12ga copper wire I got from Monoprice and banana terminals from Crutchfield. Works fine for me. Don't need nothing fancy.
Sorry Paul but this time you flew in circles. What about the length vs gauge correlation? What about insulation? Usually you come up with pretty good answers.
would it be fair to say to use 10 gauge for subwoofer cable and 12 or 14 gauge for the regular speaker be optimal?
I'm going to try a bywire with 10 gauge for mids and 18 or 14 gauge for vocals and tweeters.
Thank you Paul! I'll try to be brief, but, you know me! I've studied Electronics several times, for years, as it interests me, and I can often relate this knowledge to music (reproduction). I'm sure that Paul & his engineers are aware of the following; I am trying to explain this for those not as versed in Electronic Theory. Inductance and capacitance are two of the basic elements in electronics. You, Paul, discuss Capacitors and Capacitance in some of your presentations. Perhaps you have heard the term 'ELI the ICE Man.' (This is long before "Ice, Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice, or the Rap Music artist, Ice Cube, and the movie "Book of Eli" with Denzel Washington!). The 'L' in ELI refers to an Inductor and Inductance. The 'C' in ICE pertains to a Capacitor and Capacitance. The sequence of these letters is important because ELI means that Voltage leads current in a circuit with Inductance, and ICE indicates that Current leads voltage on a capacitive circuit. One day I was told that even a straight wire has - some - Inductance, and Capacitance (as well as resistance). Therefore, the voltage is being shifted ninety degrees ahead of the current in an Inductive circuit (or, conversely, current lags the voltage), and in a predominately Capacitive circuit, current leads the voltage. Is it possible that these 'shifts' may affect the integrity of both the audio AND digital signals? Please don't say, maybe, just a little. Some of us go, to a lot of effort as best we can to achieve as accurate as possible sound reproduction. In a circuit with 'equal' amounts of Inductance and Capacitance, these opposite lead and lag factors cancel out, and you're back in phase, again. A long speaker wire, with each strand encased in some sort of non-conductor, and then the two wires placed next to each other, seems to me to have the potential to have at least a bit of a capacitive effect, and this can lessen or attenuate some of the high frequencies. Could this be at least part of the reason for the perceived roll off in the speaker high frequencies? There are measuring devices for Inductance and Capacitance, as well mas Resistance, of course. Should you seperate each strand of speaker wire (or ribbon) from each other, but keep them at equal length? (Conversely, Inductors tend to oppose, attenuate lower frequencies). Speakers can have a 'Crossover' inside the speaker, to direct the frequencies to the appropriate speaker. If the crossover uses Inductors, Capacitors (and resistors) to achieve this, can this cause some kind of change in phase / phasing, & thereby affect the sound? (This last should be a question to Paul!) I have considered 3 separate amplifiers, designed specifically for each woofer, mid range & tweeter. (There is also an excellent 4 way speaker). Some of my speakers have small indentations in the back of them, with little pins or knobs, to adjust the frequency response.
Inductors/inductance create a LOW PASS filter. Capacitors/capacitance creates a HIGH PASS filter.
For some reason I thought electrons flowed on the outside surface of the wire or ribbon and if you increased the surface area for the electrons to flow you increased the signal coming through at the other end, so using a wire strand bundle with lots of fine wires has more surface area than a solid core wire of the same diameter. Is this true or not?
As I understand it, yes, but not at audio frequencies. I was told this by a telecom engineer who was into HiFi.
pretty sure it depends on the power you want to pump and the distance of the cables.
It surely depends on those things.
First, its not about gauge its more about materials and design. The listener wrote in, like many other get caught up in gauge and size when it should be about sound quality. You cant buy good quality cables at a department store, you must go to a high end audio store to find the better brands and better made cables. Most high end stores will allow you to take home different cables to fine the ones that complement the sound of the rest of the system. That goes for interconnects, digital cables, and power cables. Simply put them in your system and listen. Also don’t ket price be the determining factor. There are some excellent sounding budget cables “iF” you take the time to try them.
So for a DIY cable, would using say a common orange extension cord work well since it has three fairly high gage conductors. maybe two cables per speaker (three conductors for plus and 3 for minus).
They work just fine but you can get 12 ga speaker wire from part's express for 1/3 the cost
@@ericschulze5641 I ended up geting some of this from this video. pricy compaired with DIY, but it looks great, has nice terminations, and sounds good to my ears
ua-cam.com/video/2rjOdEuFe88/v-deo.html
It's all about the resistance per foot.
I saw a big difference from going straight bare wire 18g to sure grip banana plugs and 16g and now my Infiniti sm-152 rock better than ever ! Paul what you think of the sm-152s?
Tee-Jay The Stereo-Bargain-File Try 14 or 12 gauge speaker wire. You generally have to go up or down 2 sizes (18 to 14, 16 to 12, etc.) to hear an obvious difference in the sound, particularly on short but loud transient sounds, like drumbeats or handclaps. All the speaker wire in my place is minimum 12 gauge, and some are thicker. Sounds great!
@@nomorokay I went from 14 gauge to 10 gauge on my focal aria 948s, and the bass came alive, before it had barely any bass presence.
@@ArthaxtaDaVince777
The lower the speakers' sensitivity, the more the size of speaker wire matters. If your speakers are power hungry, going up a couple of sizes like you did is like getting a more powerful amplifier. Have you considered 8 gauge? The only issue is that it won't fit into all brands of connectors.
With very sensitive speakers, like Klipsch La Scalas (105 dB/W/m), the difference is less obvious, because less current is flowing, but with any speakers, 14 gauge is a bare minimum, and 12 gauge is even better.
@@nomorokay Yeah and it's not just sensitivity, because a very sensitive speaker like mines (92 db at 8 ohm) can have a very low nominal impedance. My 948s would demand as low as 2.5 ohms at lower frequency, so a thicker cable was a must. I haven't considered 8 gauge but only because I didn't find anything online.
@@ArthaxtaDaVince777
An inexpensive brand of good speaker cable in all sizes is KnuKonceptz. They have several models, but I use Karma Kable SS. The SS stands for Smoke and Silver, because those are its colours. One conductor is covered in grey dielectric and the other one is covered in silver. They’re in twisted pair configuration, which rejects interference, and are covered in a thick clear sheath, which provides both protection and maybe a little more spacing from any wires they’re in contact with.
They’re made of oxygen free tinned copper. The tin coating makes them suitable for marine applications, so corrosion will never be an issue. They’re made of hundreds of very fine strands of wire, which makes them very flexible and easy to cut to length with a sharp knife or box cutter. The bigger sizes can be heavy, as you know, so in some applications you might want to support or secure them to avoid tugging on your connectors.
My JubScala IIs (Klipsch La Scala IIs with K402 Jubilee tweeters) are bi-amped, so I use 8 gauge for the woofers and 10 gauge for the tweeters. It may be overdoing it with those speakers, but when I’m siting on my sofa enjoying music, I’d rather feel that I overdid it with the speaker wire than underdid it.
Considering how thin the wires are in speaker enclosures, you really shouldn't need anything thicker than 14 or 16 gauge for runs up to 25 feet. I agree with Paul that speakers with thicker wire sound fuller than thin ones based on personal experience.
What is important is that they are of as low impedance (= resistance at audio frequencies) as possible (i.e. shorter, thicker and made of silver if you can afford it. The amplifier is designed to have a low dynamic impedance at the output terminals by taking the negative feedback from this point. Adding resistance after this point allows the wildly varying impedance of the drive units and cross-overs to affect the power output at the speakers over the frequency spectrum. Talk of skin effects at these frequencies is just a way to sell speaker cables.
Silver is a bad idea. While it has the highest conductivity of all metals it is high in oxidation. The sound is different with silver... not sure if that's a good thing or not, just like a highly articulate speaker is not necessarily the best option-- otherwise we'd all be using studio monitors. (which BTW I love... but again not for everyone)
I've found that for an economical 2 conductor 12 or 14 gauge stranded copper cable AKA lamp cord works very well as speaker cable compared to more expensive "pro' speaker wire at the higher price for the same size and specs. in addition to that I've found from years of patching together different combinations of components since ii was a kid that even though they may cost more, some of the so called 'pro speaker cables' have one copper stranded conductor and one aluminum stranded conductor, but to me do not really sound as good and the regular lamp cord from your local home improvement store at about half the price. you can get that any color you want to match your decor or blend i enough to not be noticed easily. I'm into inexpensive but decent quality and hate to pay more that it's worth to me personally. I don't think of y self as and "audiophile as such. so if i have to ask how much it (high end audio equipment) costs I won't bother with it. I don't need it if it cost more than my car.
What Is Specific " A.W.G " Standard Of The Speaker Cables For The Rated 8 Ohms Impedance Stereo Amplifier & The 8 Ohms Pair Of Speaker ?
is braided solid core cat5 a good speaker cable?
No. Diameter is way too low. For speaker cable, go for at least AWG13 (2.6mm²) for short cables, better use AWG11 (4mm²) if 10ft. (3m) or longer.
*laughs in 8awg ofc*
Hi Paul. I'm using a 10 gauge speaker cables & for my dedicated music listening. Is that Ok?
Paul McGowan
Thanks Paul.
Should speaker wire always be twisted? Can 12 gauge copper stranded, 12 romex, taken apart and omitting the ground wire, be twisted and a pre twisted pair of solid wire from a cat 5 assembly be all twisted together to have your cake and eat it to..with whipped cream?
The speaker cable "he designed" sounds exactly like Audioquest design..... Pauls eyes should be Brown
I have to run my speaker wires inside the walls of my home theater, the contractor used the industry standard for in-wall application. It's shielded and is not thick like my Monster Cable speaker wires. I couldn't tell any difference between the thick speaker wires and the in-wall thinner wires. Obviously, I could ask them to run my Monster Cable wires in the wall, but I want to stick with the industry standard for in-wall applications.
Speaker cable as thick as the national grid cables - cables used inside a loudspeaker = 1.5 mm off the real cheap shit. It's utter bullshit along with nearly every 'hi-fi' cable.
Hi Paul, Thank you for this video! I’m looking to connect my Yamaha NS-10Ms to a Yamaha P2200 amp. When I heard you say the bigger the gauge the lower the top end I smiled. The original style of NS-10s are known for having an issue with the top end being almost unbearable at times. If you were using this combination, what gauge would you use for the connection?
HI PAUL, WHEN I FINGERED MY BUTTHOLE I FARTED IN CABLE.
Love it! this channel rocks. Do you have suggestions for digital sound processing and the quality of coax cables?
Coax is better for audio than optical.
@@m.morininvestor9920 Mind shedding some light on why? Thanks in advance
hey bro i use neotech nevd 2001 digital cable between my cd and my dac .its amazing...also use two pairs of the same cable as interconnectors.also amazing ....because its triaxial cable with pure mono silver in the middle it gives you a "buble"of sound with no stress very musical and very smooth ....enjoy if you can...
@@m.morininvestor9920 what a nonsense! for digital transmission itself there can be no difference at all but optical connections prevent any grounding issues on a physical layer
Please explain to the senior. Can we use NYYHY series power cables for speaker cables?
Are there specific differences between the two types of power cables with special speaker cables? Before that, I would like to thank you. I'm from Indonesian
Not surr
thank you!
Paul, thanks for the explanation of the loudspeaker cables. From my experience, the thicker the gauge is the better will be the sound. One very important thing which you have not mentioned regarding the cables is their huge impact on the Amplifier's damping factor. The lower is the wiring resistance, the higher is the system damping factor. It goes in the similar way for lower AC and higher AC (skin effect of the wire). The larger is the wire diameter, the greater is the skin which helps higher frequencies and higher harmonics to reach the speaker. The thicker wire reduces as well its resistance for lower frequencies as the pass at their whole diameter area. This enables a better and tight bass (not smeared). Because of the better damping factor, the speaker's diaphragm is less oscillating, damped immediately at the signal stop, especially with "foot drum" (no bbuuuu, but "B"). If someone likes perfection, Litz power wires will do the best job (more skin). Any way thank you for the good explanation.
DUmping factor, or DAmping factor ?
@@pcollenyt3683 You are correct, damping. A typo error. I corrected it. Thank you. :)
@@pcollenyt3683 neither, it's dampening factor.
I improved the sound of my system by running thicker speaker cable from DCSK purchased from Amazon. The sound was fatter, with more bottom end in it. This was compared to the stock cable that came with the speakers.
Thickness is important until it's not. My rear speakers have junk cable because that's all that fits. They still sound ok.
I guess it depends on the voltage. In the UK we have 240v so at say 100w you're looking at only 0.42A which is nothing! 10AWG cable can handle 20A+ continuous which is like 5000w!
Ahhh, wall line voltage has nothing to do with the voltage going to your speaker. Do you guys use 10AWG in your walls in the UK?
This is all you need to know -- "OFC" is silly to specify, for low frequency electrical conductivity copper is copper -- what matters is the ratio of resistance of the cable (both conductors added together) to the nominal impedance of the speaker. Roger Russell's classic table works if you want to avoid the actual simple math involved.
www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#wiretable
I always use one wire gauge higher than is specified. The size of the wire guard you need is determined by the amperage passing through it. There are charts on line that can help you with that. The main reason I go larger is power to the speakers, or wattage, can be lost in the form of heat. Larger guage wire will not be effected as much as smaller guage wire will be. This is because of the way electricity flows through a conductor, called the skin effect. Electricity tends to flow on the outer edge of a conductor, or the surface of that conductor. In this case the outer diameter of a wire. When you have stranded wire vs solid core wire the current has a lot more surface area to travel through, and when you use a larger guage wire, as long as the individual strands of the wire are the same size, you have even more surface area. I like to give my amp every advantage I can to get its signal to the speaker. Now, it's interesting that Paul said they used Romeo, single conductor wire. He said it delivered better bass response, so now he's got me thinking of making a hybrid cable of my own. It's certainly not expensive, and I wonder what it will do when pairs with a good oxygen free multi stranded wire. It's definitely food for thought!
it's called resistance....the higher the resistance of a conductor, the more it will suck, the lower the resistance, the better it will perform, simple...as the wires get longer, the resistance gets bigger, so you need a thicker cable for a longer route, there are some capacitance issues but from my testing, only with expensive audiophile cables, that are made with magic, and therefor they don't care about resistance and capacitance!
Foil wire helps cut down on skin effect at higher frequencies by increasing the surface area that electrons are forced to flow through. Inductors are an integral part of passive crossovers, they are made of long runs of copper coiled up. So the longer the speaker run and the thinner the wire you have, you are lowering the 6db cut off point of your first order low pass filter, aka your speaker wire. 30 feet of 1.3mm wire (16awg straight not coiled) has 17uH of inductance which is roughly a 30khz first order low pass into a 10 ohm load. This is not accounting for skin effect which reduces the wire cross section and lowers the the cut off point more. Speaker wires become important if they are not correctly chosen for the load, but this can be any good copper wire it doesn't have to be 5 bucks a foot.
Skin effect has no effect until you reach into the Higher end VHF frequencies. Speaker cables are essentially a low series resistance into a low impedance. To say otherwise is misleading and dishonest.
Skin effect is very pronounced at vhf and much less so in the audio spectrum but it is calculable and it does have an affect below VHF.
Thad ward i
The skin effect at 20KHz nearly doubles the resistance of 18Ga wire. Certainly not what I would call 'insignificant'.
@@jdlech : Skin effect at 20 kHz in 18 gauge wire is nearly negligible.
The thick ones are the best. Plenty cheap stranded 6mm copper on Ebay!
Seems to make a legitimate case for Bi-amping
'Excellent explanation'
That's why I've subscribed, personally in my case using my 10 grade speaker cables when playing music I really can't tell the difference but watching movies at high volume, when the quiet scene comes in that's when I can tell the difference because at times it sounds like I'm sitting underneath a pylon! Lol, you can actually hear the electricity running through the cables!
Would love to hear your point of view on that.?
For short runs I use big enough cable to survive the environment it is used in like furniture legs, pets etc. For longer runs what he says supports bi-wiring. Makes me wonder if anybody uses copper tubing for the HF and Romex for the LF ?
STOP PRESS! PS Audio attacked by 'Just Stop Metal' nutcases for not saying thin cables are fantastic 😂
Hey Paul. If there is enough difference in speaker cables to be heard by the human ear then there is certainly enough difference to measure with test equipment (scopes). Show us. Yes there is some difference in different construction and composition. But you completely omit very important characteristics.The things you omit in these videos are so obvious to electronics engineers. It is so exposing of you.
RazorStrap I always ask for measurements from the exotic cable makers.. Specs are never shown.. No surprise, though..
No of course they don't because it's nonsense. The equipment these people play their music on was developed using measuring equipment they say cannot measure the differences in cables they say their ears can detect. Even laymen without any qualifications of any kind in electronic engineering can probably see the obvious difficulty this raises with the whole "it cannot be measured" nonsense.
cbcdesign001 indeed!
Why does everyone in these threads expect a 3hr Symposium for each basic question?
And I agree with Paul. Bigger Is Better. Especially with lower powered equipment.
It is very easy. If you just try different cables on a good system you would hear a difference at once.
Thanks for the video.. I actually like to know that what we use a heavier gauge cable for light speakers ? Will there be dullness nd loss?? Let me know if it is..
That is the experience I've made by putting thicker cables of 2,5 mm of gauge on a small Yamaha Piano Craft e810 audio equipment. There was definitely more dullness compared to the original thinner cables. Instruments definitely came across less differentiated. So I went back to the original thinner cables.
Ok, Ok You had 10 gage Romex, and lack the top frequencies. The cable is transporting AC, the signal to the speaker. The conductors are close together and perhaps 10F long. This can create a capacitance which will attenuate the high frequencies. Try separating the conductors. But if you use your senses and not going the scientific way with test equipment is not a meaningful way to be an advisor to the unsuspected public
you need bigger cables only if the internal resistance of your power amp is very very low like 0.05 ohm . but if your amp has a 0.5 ohm resistance the width of the cable allmost wont make a difference
It's all about how much power you are trying to drive... a typical home theater system is fine with 16 or 14 gauge ...When I worked in the pro audio/touring world where we were putting 1500 watts to double 18" cabinets we'd be down to 10 gauge...
Isn't this simply only down to the electrical resistance? As long as the cable doesn't have too much of a capacitive effect, the only difference should be the absolute impedance your receiver sees. I can't imagine that the crystalline structure of the copper has any impact at all, or even using pure silver.
Sven Kowatz Resistance is key and the most important factor...
The effects of speaker cable impedance is negligible at audio frequencies.
Can someone help me with this question,Is copper better than silver or does it matter??🤔🔊 For speaker wire that is?
Silver the color or silver the metal. Silver the metal tarnishes and would make poor connections. Silver the color is nickel or tin plated.
Cooper I definitely better Audio quest connectors use pure copper wire.
I hear a bunch of comments about how bi-wiring is just a waste of time and bragging points only. If you are saying that thick cables accentuate the low end while thinner ones to the same for the upper register, is there a point to be made that maybe you should bi-wire using two different gauge wires?
Yes. Definitely yes. And you can also play with different types of wires to compliment/better suit your tweeter/mid/woofer.
Why is your videos jittery in parts? They all are. Some coding/decoding problem? Using the computer for heavy tasks while encoding?
Completely smooth to me. Are you viewing on an emachine computer lol
I find it interesting that the people who recorded the music we all listen to don't seem to spend anywhere near as much time agonizing over cables : they need long runs and they need reliability.
www.mogamicable.com/
I'm sure they sell heavy gauge cables, and dealers will almost certainly cut your cables to specification. Those wanting 10K USD per foot cables probably need to look elsewhere,
I had to laugh given top-shelf system: preamp, CD transport,DAC, amp, interconnects, speaker cables etc. which are hooked up to speakers in the price range of say 5 to 8 grand and more. Those speaker's connector posts when opened up often reveal two very thin cheap looking wires going into the cross over. So what is the point in spending all those thousands when at the speaker the signal that so lovingly built form those expensive components goes into 5 and dime wire to power the drivers it makes no sense?
Some people re-wire their speakers with heavier wire, or even go as far as using silver plated wire.
But it's pointless, as the bulk of the resistance in the system is in the driver voice coils, and no one can rewire those to get rid of it. (Although if a system omits passive crossovers and drivers connect directly to a dedicated amplifier, then the amplifier can be designed to compensate for the voice coil resistance.)
The wires are probably cheap but that short distance of smaller gauge wire should usually be able transfer enough power and keep resistance to a minimum
So maybe I messed up. I thought all that was important was the gauge so I went to Home Depot to buy 12 gauge wire because it was cheaper than getting wire at a stereo shop and I thought I was smart. But now you are staying the material matters also so I guess I was not so smart as I thought.