Hello, I’m new to home audio, but have been lurking around for a bit reading up a lot about speaker wire because I think I may have gone “too cheap” on my wires. After spending around $3k on a whole set of Axiom speakers I can’t help but feel bad and would like some feed back. My issue is that I have 40ft runs to my surrounds and backs. I have to run it underneath the carpet but above the padding. After doing some looking around I found basically very few flat cables. Monster has it’s 12gauge for $1.49/ft and a 14 gauge for $.99/ft. I ended up getting some 16 gauge Acoustic research flat cable for $.19/ft. From what I’ve read so far, 16 gauge is hitting the limits on “recommended” lengths for 6 ohm speakers (http://home.earthlink.net/~rogerr7/wire.htm#wiretable) . So what I did was wire up 2 pairs of flat cable because it was still a lot cheaper. Are there any possible negative effects of what I’m doing? If there are, I would have to go back and cut a slot into my padding, and run 12 gauge wires. Here’s what I’ve Figured out:
I got resistance estimates from: http://www.pcavtech.com/techtalk/wire_size/
40 ft Monsters, 12 gauge, .0017ohms/ft, $1.49/ft, 4 speakers
Total Cost: $238 ($1.49*40ft*4runs)
Total Resistance per run: .136 ohms (.0017ohms/ft*40ft*2 for positive and negative)
40 ft Monsters, 14 gauge, .0026ohms/ft, $.99/ft, 4 speakers
Total Cost: $158 ($.99*40ft*4runs)
Total Resistance per run: .208 ohms (.0026ohms/ft*40ft*2 for positive and negative)
2 40ft Acoustic Research, 16 gauge, .0042ohms/ft, $.19/ft, 4 speakers
Total Cost: $61 ($.19*80ft*4runs)
Total Resistance per run: .168 ohms (.0021ohms/ft*40ft*2 for positive and negative)
1/Rt = 1/R1 + 1/R2 ( .0021 ohms/ft)
If I only considered resistance, running 2 pairs of 16 gauge is better then 14 gauge, but not as good as 12 gauge, and a save a heck of a lot of money.
Am I missing anything here?
