Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions My speaker cable quibble

Speaker wire, a history

What caught my attention the most was two items.

The lack of relevancy of OFC.(surprized!! Musta got the "wrong" impression from some of the more "Interesting" exotic wires reviews!)

And the fact that ya gotta be more carefull with 4 ohm speakers!!(Mine are all eight, so that's ok)

And WHY do WE all use 12G for our mains which are probably less tha eight feet on average?(OK,..I happen to have been given a few peices of 16G Monster that work on my mains)But if you look at the chart,......12G!!?? WHY???




I haven't Really looked at wires much since before I "Discovered" Axiom when I was getting back in audio at the beginning of HT.

Um,....that's like five years agoOOPS!!!


This is fun....gotta do more readin'
Rich.

Hi Martin, If no one said it before: Welcome!!

I missed your post til just nowbut it seems that you are refering to the same blurb that WID linked here just a few moments ago too!!

Good article, good stuff. Lot of(to me)surprizes there! Thanks for your input
Rich.




Doh,....don't mind me....out in left field and the game ended

Because it's easier to say "12 gauge" than "look at this chart and get out your measuring tape."

For the record, I use dual 14 gauge (effective 11 gauge) for my mains and 16 gauge for everything else. The center because I had the cable already, the sides because I needed flat cable.

This is the article! I read it quite a while back. Thanks for the reminder of where it is.

>>And WHY do WE all use 12G for our mains which are probably less tha eight feet on average?(

It's simple, really. If your cable runs are short, you might as well get 12 ga because the extra cost is trivial, heavy wire that length is easy to handle, and you might need it for part of a longar cable later.

If your cable run is medium, you either need 12 or 14 ga anyways so what the heck... might as well get 12 ga to match the shorter cables.

If your cable run is long, you need 12 ga anyways.

In reply to:

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It's simple, really. If your cable runs are short, you might as well get 12 ga because the extra cost is trivial, heavy wire that length is easy to handle, and you might need it for part of a longar cable later.

---

And Axiom's cable looks sexy. But doesn't give any performance bonus over 16ga. SJ extension cord.

Bren R.

Well Guys...it appears that the answer to my question is probably the most intuitive one after all.

...as y'all pointed out...thanx.

(and, I did even more googling last night, too!)

16 or 18 ga wire is probably OK to run; but since speaker wire can very well be the cheapest parts of our system, why not go with what we like and works best for our individual situations?

Sure.

If our equipment is exposed to the public and all the wires are visible,(or even if it's not...) then we can use real purrdy, big and colorfull wires if we want to! How cool is that?

Wanna make a design statement? Now's our chance! Can even go with those "Boutique" wires if we want to!

Or the old extension cord with the broken plug; hey,..it appears the electrons just don't care!

...and OFC's not that important!....who knew!

Freedom.....gotta luv it!!
Rich.

Here is an interesting article on how to make your own silver speaker cable
http://www.laventure.net/tourist/cables.htm

LINK