Hi Rod:
There are many things written in the audio press about speaker wire, most of them complete and total
BS with no scientific foundation. Here are your main considerations:
1. you need wire hefty enough to be appropriate to your power-handling needs. Most of us have run
super-thin cheapo wires at some point and audio does come across, but my rule of thumb is use at
least what RadioShack and others call "speaker wire," which is multi-strand copper and nowadays
about what typical copper "lamp cord" was in the 60's (alas, most made-in-China lamps today include
much thinner-gauge wire in their power cords). I prefer to tin the ends with solder and most of my
speakers and amps now use modern push-in speaker connectors (similar or identical to what used to be
push-in test-lead connectors), so I use those (available at many different electrical suppliers). If
you want to buy into some of the audio-press BS, you can spend a _lot_ of money on speaker wires. I
note that even the audiophillic Absolute Sound found little to no "listening tests" differences
between very expensive wires and an off-the-shelf Home Depot extension cord! I imgine there was some
furious blowback to the magazine from certain advertisers!
2. you need to assure the integrity of your speaker wires. This means, don't staple or tack through
the wires, and make splices secure and permanent by twisting the proper wires together and soldering
over the join, then wrapping the whole thing in good-quality electrical tape. If you are splicing so
as to avoid replacing installed wiring, then I would say just make a good splice and it will be
fine. If you can avoid splicing, that's better. Again, you can spend plenty of money and go nuts
with "accessories," such as plastic or wooden "elevators" which keep speaker wires off the floor (in
my book, this is in the PT Barnum hall of fame, along with the wooden "Replacement Knobs").
Regarding 35 feet on one side and 45 feet on another, in real-world practice I doubt this will cause
a problem. If you have any doubts, coil up 10 extra feet behind the short-side speaker.
Also, regarding your earlier question about speaker selection, there are many options and speaker
design is much better today than it was say 25 years ago. My suggestion is go and listen to as many
speakers as you can. If you buy online, make sure there's a return-money back policy. Speaker
selection is very much personal taste and when you get into "civilian" or "hi-fi" speakers, each
type sounds somewhat different. Studio monitors should be designed to produce a relatively flat
frequency response within certain measured parameters (which are rarely duplicated in real studios,
but in the case of near-fields you can usually place them where there's a direct line for sound to
travel to your ears without too much room interference). Short version of what I'm saying is, listen
to a lot of options and let your ears be your guide. It's a fun exercise, always something new to
discover with listening to different equipment.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "rod smear" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2012 1:40 PM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] speaker wire signal loss?
> Would there be any signal loss if 2 separate strands of speaker wire are connected (spliced)
> together, as opposed to 1 continous run of cable? The total length would be about 40 ft, indoors.
> Also, do both the right and left speaker cable length need to be the same. Right speaker is 35
> feet from receiver, and left speaker 45 feet away.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Rod
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