Re: Extending wire for surround speakers

"David Mayerovitch" <davmay@xxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> I have bought a Panasonic home theater sound system, model SC-HT730. Each of
> the two surround speakers is provided with 25 feet (8 meters) of AWG 22
> wire, secured at each end by spring terminals. My room layout, however,
> requires that I run the wire around the walls and I will need about 50 feet
> (16 meters) for each speaker.
>
> Can I simply buy some extra AWG 22 wire and splice it to the lengths I
> already have?

I woudl say that this woudl work most peropably in a degree that is
very acceptable to you when you are not looking for any high-end
audiophile system.

> Or, in order to minimize signal loss, should I instead replace
> each 25-foot length with 50 feet of a thicker wire? If so, what gauge would
> be adequate?

You can do that. If you pick up 18 AWG or thivker wire, you should
do not have any problem. 50 feet of 18 AWG has even less resistance than
your orignal 25 feet of of 22 AWG cable.

> This is not an audiophile system, and I assume (as a non-expert) that the
> requirements for surround speakers are less critical than those for the
> front speakers.

Usually this is the case.
This was true especially on older Dolby Surround / Pro-Logic surround systems
where the surround speakers had limited sound quality / frequecny range
in the beginning.

With the introduction of 5.1 systems, this is not exacty the case
anymore. In 5.1 channel surrouns system, all 5 speakers should have
the same performance at least in ideal case.
Anyway in real-life audio programs you play, the main part of the
sounds anyway come from the front, so if the surround speakers
are a little bit worse than the main speakers, it should have
less problems than if the problem were in the front speakers.

> I simply want to get performance that is comparable with
> that of the system as shipped. Specs for the surround speakers: 4 ohms, 70W
> max input power (IEC).
> I'd welcome any recommendations. Thanks.

If you go for 18 AWG or thicker wire, there should not be any
performance loss compared to original speaker cables.

--
Tomi Engdahl (http://www.iki.fi/then/)
Take a look at my electronics web links and documents at
http://www.epanorama.net/
.

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