I just purchased 200 feet of Blue Jeans cable speaker wire (5T00UP). I informed a friend of mine about this yesterday, and asked him what he used for speaker wire. He surprisingly said that he uses electrical extension wire. The regular bulk stuff at Home Depot used for lamps/household appliances etc. This was recommended to him by another audiophile. Has anyone else heard of this, or done this? Is this a bad idea? Hopefully my Blue Jeans cable speaker wire will perform better for the price :-)
JohnK will be here shortly with his take on using lamp wire for speaker wire.
In short, you have better quality cable, and can have longer runs (assuming you got 12g) without worrying about loss of signal.
It's not a bad idea. Audio signal is very easy to transmit so you don't have to spend a lot to get lossless transmission. The only thing you have to worry about is meeting the minimum required thickness for the length of the cable. The table on
this often-linked site will tell you what size you need.
If your friend sticks to the following cable run distances, he will experience about a 0.5dB loss on his cable when using a 4 Ohm nominal speaker. 0.5dB is considered to be the absolute lowest threshold of detectable sound pressure change:
12 gauge: 68 feet
14 gauge: 43 feet
16 gauge: 27 feet
18 gauge: 17 feet
I have actually cut an old extension cord up and used it for speaker wire.
I used to tear apart all my non-working remote control cars and splice all the wires togethor with masking tape for my m60's. Ok, I'm just joking
I used lamp cord wire for years with my speakers. Not until I came across the Axiom wire did I change from it. Sonically I hear no difference but the Axiom wire sure does look a lot better.
Ditto Rick 100%.
Lamp cord used to be recommended over the 22 gauge speaker wire many used!
Wheelz, as the site Peter linked explains in some detail, regardless of whether a two parallel conductor electrical wire is called called lampcord, speaker wire, or whatever, it does exactly the same thing by providing a pathway for the electromagnetic wave running along its outside. A gauge appropriate for the impedance of the speaker and distance of the run should be chosen, but once that's done there's no "performance" advantage possible by spending more.
