just checking out there websight as others have suggested and was wondering
if there 12 gauge speaker wire (500UE) or the (twelve white) are 100% oxygen free copper wire, that i keep hearing about is important? the price per foot doesn't include delivery , but does seem to be a good buy . i guess my real question is , is it comparable to what axion is offering ? and there banana plugs?
my bluejean speaker and sub cables just arrived today. Although it would be another month before i can test it (when my axiom system come in), i am satisfied. It took about 10 days to arrive to canada and shipping rate was very reasonable. I don't know if they are oxygen free or not. But if you don't get a response here, just email bluejean.
I would imagine that axiom cables are better (for one thing, they look better). But personally, i didn't think it would have been worth it paying double. I don't think you will even hear the difference. Another reason i went with bluejean is becuase they have the outer jacket in white. Black or transparent color would be too noticable along my wall.
I don't think you will go wrong with either.
Oxygen free really isn't important. High-tech speaker cable companies want you to believe that.
BlueJeansCables are very good, I highly recommend them.
I don't want to start a huge cable argument again, but take most people's word for it, it isn't worth it to upgrade speaker cable to those high-tech speaker cable brands. Hardly any improvement, if any, will be heard.
I think I've heard people here using lamp cable for their speakers, and they work great. Although, I would recommend just buying from bluejeanscable.com. They have high quality , cheap cable.
If you really want to know more about the topic, search the forum for speaker cable and you will find plenty of posts about this topic.
DL, what you've been hearing about 100% oxygen free is true, but just applying it to speaker wire isn't nearly enough. For truly pure sound the entire listening environment must be oxygen free, as the brave volunteers shown
here in Project 8 , hoping to experience this for the first time, illustrate.
Okay, so much for the kidding; the oxygen-free thing is pure nonsense. A minute amount of oxygen is added to copper in the production process to combine with impurities. All commercially available copper wire is better than 99.9% pure and works just fine for speaker wire among other things. Blue Jeans is a reputable company, but you can get speaker wire for less than that, so unless you like to pay more get the least expensive that you can find. Copper wire is a commodity item, an adequate gauge of which has no problem with the technologically trivial task of guiding an electromagnetic wave down it at audio frequencies.
No one other than John can say that as well as he did.
Just go to any home improvement store (HD, Menards, Lowes, etc..) , there you can buy bulk wire of any length right off the spools. For the most part, copper is copper. Whatever you do, don't get caught up in the Monster hype.
thanks to all for the insight, one less problem to deal with.
knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
Knowledge can also be boring......!
We used to have some pretty rousing discussions about the relative merits of different wire types until common sense and data interpretation came together to show that wires be wires and guage is the only actually important consideration.
The OFC question is interesting. While there seems to be no obvious reason to include it in a quality wire set; the exclusion of it by an audio manufacturer would probably not advance their marketing cause much.
......just how DO myths get started anyway?
deadline, the Home Depot wire is the Carol brand. You may want to consider 14 ga instead of 12ga. the 12 is stiff and can stress the connections on your receiver.
Also, HD is apparently on to us. The 14 ga had been selling in their bulk department for about $.26/ft, now it's $.46. However, they have 250 foot rolls for $.22/ft.
thanks for the heads up about the home depot cable, i'll take a look this week .
I like bluejeans and MonoPrice.com
The 250 roll of 12 gauge wire I bought at Lowes was the Woods brand and it cost me $67.00 or $.27/ft ft. It was cheaper for me to buy a full roll and get the 'contractors price' than it was to buy cut lengths, this may be the reason for the $.46/ft as opposed to the $.22/ft price at HD?
The last wire I bought was some 16/4 in wall from a local audio shop at $.28 a foot.
Rick, whenever the dealer installing my wall plates stopped by the house to check out my in wall wiring/cabling job the first thing he did was grab one of the speaker wires and said 'Uh oh ... you should have used oxygen free, in-wall specific speaker wire' 'Oh really? And why is that?' 'Well oxygen free is better cable and specific in wall wires have an outer liner that will not produce fumes if ever caught on fire'.
After a couple of minutes of 'real talk' he finally confessed that what I installed would be perfectly fine, although maybe not politically correct for the industry and 'there's really not any difference between oxygen free and regular wire'. As for the fumes I did address that if the these particular wires were on fire the least of my worries was the fumes produced by the plastic sheathing on a 12 gauge speaker wire. He wholeheartedly agreed.
I agree........................ I think if my house was on fire, the in wall speaker wires would be the least of my concerns. LOL
plenum rated wire is required in spaces that are considered to be a plenum
this wire gives off low smoke and has a higher burning temp than regular wire.it is code in most areas i believe
If you go to one of the home improvement warehouse type stores, check by the low voltage lighting (the small outdoor lights that stick in the ground). These use 12/2 cable that is usually .22 to .28 a foot on 100 ft. rolls.
>>plenum rated wire is required in spaces that are considered to be a plenum
Arrrr, there be the magic words. I went through this whole exercise a year ago. If you are running wires in an area which is part of the air circulation system (and occasionally the space between two studs will be used as cold air return) then you need special wire. Other than that... any wire is good.
sorry to hear that i missed this exercise last year, but one question, (at least for now) if you need special wire when passing near cold air(how you have stated), then is there some special wire to be used if your wire will be passing right next to your radiator?
I have been working on renovations to my Basement home theatre and bought in wall 12 gauge from Home depot (Oxygen free too BTW, not that it matters). It was $0.92 CDN per metre. For our American friends a metre is about 3 and 1/2 feet so that would be about $.26 CDN per foot. Seems like pretty good wire to me and well worth the $$$.
In reply to:
I have been working on renovations to my Basement home theatre and bought in wall 12 gauge from Home depot
Ditto. I am in the process of installing the cabling through the floor joists. The cable is a nice green-jacketed in-wall rated 12 ga multi-stranded cable. Fairly inexpensive and will handle any audio signal sent though them. I have the rear and side wires run and just have to do the runs for the front speakers.
That's exactly the same cable I purchased. I also purchased these from parts express online for the surround connections:
For any of you folks doing your own in-wall cabling and wiring installations, I installed terminal rectangles (Parts Express part# 260-309) for my QS8s. These are recessed so you'll be able to mount your QS's flush to the wall with a nice looking terminal.
I didn't like the connects on the plate so I drilled a 3/8" hole where the much smaller existing connector holes were and installed a pair of pictured gold binding post, they are much easier to connect the speaker wire to the backside of the plates with these post. These binding post can be bought at most local electronics stores.
Overall these terminal plates makes for a very nice and clean installation.
Ooh, good idea BrotherBob ! Very nice.
For mine I liked the idea of using a standard electrical box but it would have been nice to be able to hide the wire running to the QS8s.
Those plates are exactly what I was looking for! When I mount the surrounds I wanted black and recessed. Those speaker plates are perfect!
Now I know where to get them! The white terminal plates will be used in the A/V closet. I am also going to buy that big 7.1 triple-ganged speaker/sub-woofer terminal plate.
Bruce,
Let us know how it turns out.
Thanks, Brother Bob for turning me on to those plates, they might be just what I need for my install. What did you use between the wall and the speaker - banana plugs, spades, bare wire? I was wondering if there was enough clearance for the connectors between the speaker and the wall.
Also, did you mount the wall plate at the same exact height as the terminal plate on the QS8s?
Thanks