The maximum distance you can run speaker wires for quality sound.
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- Опубліковано 1 сер 2024
- The maximum length of speaker cable for quality sound, the best wire to use, and how you can distribute speakers over long distances with minimal losses in the wiring.
Came here mainly for the 70 V/100V distribution information.
Very nicely explained, thanks!
Thanks, much appreciated.
Very good video. To the point and well presented
Much appreciated!
I don't know, Barry, I did just as you suggested, I connected my amp to my speakers with long pieces of rubber and I didn't get a peep out of them! 😉 Great vid, very clear and informative.
Heh, good luck with that! Thanks.
LOL
Best explanation I've heard, very informative. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for another great video. For my fairly decent Hi-Fi setup, I use Monoprice 2747 speaker cable, 12 gauge. About $30 for 50 feet. Makes my Bowers & Wilkins speakers sound fabulous.
I use Pro Co Ameriquad cables in my small recording studio, into my ATC SCM25A powered monitors. They sound great too.
Now that I'm getting back into gigging post-shutdown, thanks to this video I'll pay more attention to the cables for our PA.
Thanks again for a very clear and helpful video.
Thank you!
What a great explanation, Barry! Thanks for another great video. Cheers 🍻
My pleasure!
Great information!! Wish I knew all these before! Thanks again!
Glad it was helpful!
Gret video here. Good info. I like 10 gauge pretty much everywhere even with my 10 and 20 foot runs. Probably overkill but sure works great. Yes terminating can be harder, but I leave that to Blue Jeans cable who do a great job. Not the absolute cheapest but nowhere near being expensive especially in the grand scheme.
Pure Genius. Love it
Thanks!
I have a warehouse that is 426 feet long by 174 wide and they want to have up to 13 speakers throughout the facility and I know how to do some AV but this is a little bit mind blowing if you could help out with what I would need, I would really appreciate your help
Happy to help. If you just need to do voice announcements throughout the facility, and it's a single zone, I would just hang paging horns similar to what I recommend below that include 70 volt input, and drive them with a simple paging amplifier that provides 70 volt audio output.
Let me know your requirements, and I'll help best I can.
JBL Professional CSS-H30 Horn amzn.to/3TDYRii
Bogen 100-Watt Public Address Amplifier amzn.to/3PG9iRl
Stranded also allows more current at higher frequency.. the thicker solid cores don't like higher frequencies.
That is only relevant for very high frequency, like radio frequency, for audio frequency this do not matter, sorry.
The same goes for skin effect, for audio frequency, the voltage, current and wire size present, this do not matter.
Both skin effect and the fact that higher frequency goes better in stranded wire is true, but it doesn't matter when we are dealing with audio frequency.
Excellent explanation and examples, was eagerly waiting for 70v speaker cable gauge, what gauge would you suggest for 1000feet run?
Thank you
1000ft is a good run, it's going to require some copper if you don't want to lose much power, even at 70 volts.
I'd suggest 16 gauge wire, which equates to about 10% power loss in the wire for 1000ft @ 70v. You could do 18ga, for about 20% power loss on the run. Thicker is always better, and more costly.
NEXO (Powered by Yamaha) rule of thumbs. Max cable length ( meters ) = Load Imp (ohm) X Cord x-section (mm²)
so basically if money is not an issue just use 10awg and itll work for short or long distance
Sure, that'll work -- but maybe overkill for shorter runs.
Hi Barry. I am building my smart home and I am leaning towards in-ceiling wired speakers. The thing is, my demark is at the basement (20 meters - 65 feet) far from the apartment entrance. Therefore, some speakers in the apartment will end up being 35 meters - 120 feet far from the demark. I am considering 12 AWG cables for everything. Do you think it should be okay?
I'd prefer to see a setup where you have amplifiers closer to the speakers and run balanced line-level audio, or a 70v (or 25v) distributed system.
But, will 120 feet of 12 gauge wire work? Sure, and since these are ceiling speakers and (I suspect) it's not a real critical listening situation, and we don't care about losing a little teeny bit of power in the wire, I think you'll be just fine.
Does using transformers on long runs myte high frequencies? I would guess the inductance of the transformers and capacitance of the long cables would affect them.
Yes, those higher voltage distribution systems are not intended to provide audiophile level listening experience. But oftentimes the fidelity is perfectly adequate for casual listening.
I got a stupid question
I worked in a nightclub some years ago, and they had a room full of 100 watt amplifiers, but all the speakers i could see looked like they were powered
Would they have used the 100 watt amplifiers just to push the signal along extreme lengths of cable?
I wouldn't expect them to use power amplifiers to drive powered speakers. So, I would presume those amplifiers are for other speakers, or perhaps it's a result of legacy stuff that has been upgraded over time. Hard to say without investigating what they did.
@@Barry-Watson the club has closed down now, they definitely had a room full of amplifiers that were flashing their clip lights while the music was on, so they were still connected to something
But when you went upstairs, you could see the power lights on the back of the hanging line array speakers
They had three podiums you could dance on, and they said there was banks of 18" subwoofers inside those podiums, inside bandpass boxes, but i would imagine they would run off more than 100 watt amplifiers
I wouldn't have imagined they would have banked all those amplifiers together either, surely connecting one amplifier output to another amplifiers output would blow the amplifiers up wouldn't it?
All the line splitters in the room were powered up and flashing the peak/clip lights too
They wouldn't leave a complete room full of amplifiers on for nothing surely?
Maybe they ran to smaller speakers around the building? I know there were speakers in the toilet ceilings, horn speakers outside in the queueing area, speakers in the lobby ceiling, and a few back rooms and vip rooms, maybe those amplifiers were for that? But there seemed to be too many amplifiers for such a small amount of ceiling speakers you could count
Unless they had hidden speakers all over the place, inside statues and behind decorations?
They said the club ran 30,000 watts, but id have said the amount of amplifiers in that room would equate to hundreds of thousands of watts, there was literally racks of 100 watt amplifiers stacked about 20 high, and the room was full all down one wall which was around 60 feet long, lots and lots of small amplifiers
In fact is was probably more than i think in there, because there was about 8 to 10 amplifers in a stack, then a line splitter, and possibly a power distribution unit, or power conditioner, then another stack of about 8 to 10 amplifiers on top of that, and another set of line splitter and power conditioner
The amplifier room was the only place in the entire club that was air conditioned too, it was like walking into a reefer first thing on a night, then it got up to about room temperature half way through the night, and stayed that temperature
Very strange setup
For the main house speakers that are driving the dance floor, I would expect to see amplifiers larger than 100 watts. I would presume amplifiers of that size are probably driving speakers that are outside of the building, or other zones where you don't need extreme volume. They may be using a good number of amplifiers, so they can have multiple zones that are independently controlled. Of course, without looking at how the system is actually set up I can only speculate.
@@Barry-Watson i think your right, our assumptions are very similar
There is another cherry on top, I'm not certain if they had a vibrating dance floor or not, the floor did vibrate somewhat, but im not sure if that was due to all the subwoofers around it, or whether it was down to the floor being mounted on drivers, maybe that could be another reason they had so many 100 watt amplifiers, it was hard to tell because i was a medic working there, and always had thick rubber boots on
The dance floor was raised somewhat from the surrounding floor, there was say a 6 inch step up to it, and it did seem like it was floating
The venue was called isis nightclub in Nottingham, uk, formerly known as the black orchid
Its closed down now, and inside has been almost demolished by copper cable looters, and vandals, so it would be difficult to say exactly what they had that amplifier room for, unless i bump into someone that worked there whilst they were all fitted
So to make it simple if your speakers are 2 ft. Away from receiver use(?) but if you’re speakers are 20’ away use (?) that’s it plain and simple because you got me even more confused, thanks
Thanks for watching! The wire's resistance increases with length, so you need thicker wires for longer runs to preserve the same performance.
To keep it simple, I would say 18 gauge wire would be plenty sufficient for any runs 20 feet or less in typical home audio.
If you're a serious audiophile doing critical listening, at higher power levels, and want the very best bass transient response I'd reach for as large of cables as practical - like 10 or 12 gauge.
This is all a matter of audio fidelity performance and power loss in the wire. You could use super thin wires, like 24 gauge and your speakers will work, nothing will be damaged, but you'll compromise some sound quality.
Sir which wire gauge suitable for wiring car head unit to speaker ? 18 or 16 ?
The wire length isn't extremely long, so I think 18 gauge would probably work fine. Larger wire is always a little better, so I would choose 14 or 16 gauge if the wire size isn't an issue and it's convenient. Thicker than 14 gauge seems overkill to me, unless you're building a really high-powered competition system.
@@Barry-Watson thank you sir
What gauge cable do you recommend to use inside speaker box from a passive crossover to speaker
That's a short little run of cable, so I don't think you need any really massive wire.
I'd probably reach for some 14 or 16 gauge stranded copper wire. I'd use whatever is handy, but I wouldn't go smaller than 18 gauge. I'm assuming these are typical home hi-fi speakers, or PA speakers.
What is the maximum length of the speaker wire?
Depends upon the situation, I explain in detail in the video.
How does 14 gauge cca compare to 12 gauge ofc?
I'd go for ofc (oxy free copper) over cca (copper clad aluminum), and I'd take 12ga (larger) over 14ga. So, for me the 12 gauge ofc wins.
Now, if the gauges were reversed 12cca vs 14ofc they should be pretty comparable in terms of resistance and be about equal choices - but I'd still lean toward the copper wire (ofc) over the aluminum cored wire.
Of course, either wire will pass signal. Rock on!
For example in house wiring if you use no:8 aluminum it can be replaced with the better option and that's no:10 copper good for 30 amps. Aluminum is always a poor choice it can expand and contract causing loose connections. Copper should always be the first choice.
Take the wattage and divided by the voltage for wire size. Car volts 12 vs American house voltage 110 bolts or actually around 116 to 119 volts. That's why they can use smaller wire size. 119 watts is only 1 amp at 119 volts. Same thing for car at 12 volts is almost 10 amps. Big difference. 240 watts car auto is no: 12 wire. 480 watts car auto no: 8 copper. 480 watts home audio the voltage will be higher and less amps smaller wire size.
What about active speakers?
With active speakers you're just sending a signal down the cable, but you don't have to carry high power which requires a thick cable capable of carrying a lot of current.
If you use pro-sound, balanced 3-wire connections to drive your active speakers, with quality signal/mic cable you can run long lengths (more than 100ft) without significant signal degradation.
Open the speakers and look at the wire used..............................
Some manufacturers will use thin(er) wire inside of the box, not my preference, but keep in mind that the wire length inside the box is very short so they can get away with it.