What Speaker Wire To Buy As Fast As Possible
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2016-05-06
·
947 words · ~4 min read
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so you're jumping into the world of do-it-yourself home theater which is
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awesome but how do you go about choosing the right components well one way is to
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start by thinking of one of the most fundamental concerns for any home
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theater novice or veteran which is electrical impedance a measure of how
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much a speaker or wire will resist electrical current this is important
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because too little power will make your nice new speakers
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sound like garbage you see all speakers have an impedance rating which is
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measured in ohms you might be familiar with ohms if you're into shopping for
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headphones freestanding speakers however have a much lower impedance rating than
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said headphones would since they need a lot more current to drive them most
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speakers are rated between only six and eight ohms so additional impedance
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introduced through improper wiring can
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impede the performance pretty badly
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fortunately though knowing what kind of speaker wire to buy isn't terribly
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difficult well it's true that consumers can be bedazzled and befuddled by
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marketing hype the things that are really very important are also very
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simple it's just length and width you can think of speaker wire kind of like a
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water pipe not a great analogy but either way just as it's easier to push
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lots of water through a short fat pipe compared to a long skinny one
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runs of shorter thicker wire have a lower impedance and therefore carry
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current more easily which is important for any speaker worth its salt and
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especially important for higher-end speakers with impedances of four ohms or
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less thinner wires can be passable for very short runs but if you're trying to
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install something in a larger room or want any kind of surround setup it's
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important to pay attention to the gauge of the wire which is a standard
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measurement of thickness that can be a little confusing since a smaller gauge
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number indicates a thicker wire if you're rocking 8 ohm speakers for
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example readily available 16 gauge wire will give you good performance up to 50
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feet but keep in mind that since speakers can have variable impedance
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depending on what frequency they're playing at any given time it's not a bad
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idea to pick up wire a little bit thicker than you need in order to
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compensate you should also try to stay away from wire runs longer than 50 feet
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regardless of the thickness as it can cause you to lose a little bit of the
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higher frequencies due to copper's electrical properties so what does this
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mean for the average home theater user if you take a typical room size of about
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20 by 16 feet and put your display on one end and use conservative estimates
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for wire length and thickness a 60 foot spool of 16 gauge wire would serve you
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just fine for your rear speakers while you can get away with just about 30
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total feet of 22 gauge for your front center and subwoofer this assumes you
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are using a typical 6 to 8 ohm speaker setup and if you went with a higher set
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of say 4 ohm speakers you'll want to go with 14 gauge for the surround channels
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and 20 gauge for the stuff up front and that's an at least for all of those okay
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luke i've got it short thick wires are good but are those the only things that
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matter those the only things i have to worry about well it makes sense to make sure that
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your wires are insulated well to protect against interference and maybe you
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should try using pin or banana connectors rather than just sticking
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bare wires into your speakers that can help ensure that you have a solid
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connection however spending hundreds of dollars on premium cables in all
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likelihood will not lead to any sort of improvements in terms of sound quality
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so save the money you would have spent on that stupid snake oil and maybe put
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it towards some shiny new tv that you can watch tech wiki on with the room
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Linus and sign up in the us canada or australia don't forget to like the video
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or dislike the video if your setup sounds terrible and you don't like my
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advice check out the comment section down below where you should leave an
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idea for something we should cover down there
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also check up there channel's super fun i
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like giving them call outs super funds awesome berkel sitting right
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there probably working on it right now so like hopefully he can hear this and
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it energizes him to make a really good next episode that you guys can check out
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up there don't forget to subscribe both these channels this one that one whatever you
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want i'll see you next time