Re: Speaker Cables

The speaker cable baloney has been going on seemingly forever.

I have a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and have never been able to find a
single bit of solid scientific evidence to support any of the claims made
for fancy speaker cables. It all seems to be a "stereophile" thing about
"staging" and "imaging", etc. etc. It's all subjective and if it makes
someone happy to spend hundreds of dollars on a piece of wire, so be it.

For your purposes, all you need to know is that (roughly speaking) the
current that is carried by a speaker wire is about equal to the square root
of the quotient of power delivered divided by the impedance of the speaker
(sqrt of P/Z). So if you want to deliver 1000 watts to a 4 ohm speaker you
will have about 16 amps flowing in the wire. So, a nice piece of 12 gauge
zip cord should be perfectly adequate for almost any setup you might have.

Note: speaker wire should NOT be shielded.



"JoeSpareBedroom" <dishborealis@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:RGQcl.28813$qi.4173@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A musical acquaintance who is otherwise a very nice person loves to go on
and on endlessly about technical things, until his victims become catatonic
and collapse. Yesterday, I made the mistake of mumbling something about
using some nice 14 gauge (yes-it's 14) speaker wire to make a 30 foot link
for when I want to put one cabinet at the front of the stage. I immediately
got a speech about how I really should use the kind available at the music
store because they're shielded to avoid heptaflambular perambulatory
pierogie interference yadda yadda yadda.

I've never looked inside the store-bought speaker cables I own (mostly
Whirlwind). Are they really anything special, other than two conductors
and a black wrapper? I suppose the wrapper will afford some protection
against foot traffic, but other than that?



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Speaker Cables
    ... I made the mistake of mumbling something about ... pierogie interference yadda yadda yadda. ... I've never looked inside the store-bought speaker cables I own (mostly ... and a black wrapper? ...
    (alt.guitar.bass)
  • Re: Speaker Cables
    ... I made the mistake of mumbling something about using some nice 14 gauge speaker wire to make a 30 foot link for when I want to put one cabinet at the front of the stage. ... I immediately got a speech about how I really should use the kind available at the music store because they're shielded to avoid heptaflambular perambulatory pierogie interference yadda yadda yadda. ... I've never looked inside the store-bought speaker cables I own. ... This stuff is thicker than lamp cord. ...
    (alt.guitar.bass)
  • Re: Speaker Cables
    ... make a 30 foot link for when I want to put one cabinet at the front of the ... heptaflambular perambulatory pierogie interference yadda yadda yadda. ... I've never looked inside the store-bought speaker cables I own (mostly ... the insulation) than lamp cord. ...
    (alt.guitar.bass)