Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Speaker Wire

I did 12 gauge wire in my basement. I ended up running over 600' of cable as it works out to be far easier to run wire when the walls are not up, than trying to run wires when they are.

If I was to do it all over again, I would have saved myself a whole heap of money and done it in 14 or 16 gauge.

Think of it from this perspective. Your house that has 120v15amp plugs run throughout is using 14gauge wire to feed them. Each plug is getting 1800watts of power. How many watts is your amp? Maybe 100-200. So if the wall outlets that are getting 10x the constant power can use 14 gague wire, how will your speakers need more? Save yourself some big dollars.

If you run smaller gauge wire, but more of it, (ie run double the number of cables to each drop) you now have the option to to use both pairs and in effect bi/wire to your speakers.

I ran the cable drops for 11.2 sound even though I don't have the speakers. Who knows if some day in the future I will want it. It cost me a small fraction more to run too much compared to even trying to run one new pair after the drywall is up. And if there was a bad cable at some point in the future, I have spare cable so I am not stuck.

Make sure however that you run the proper CL2 stuff. I used Monoprice but I am sure there are loads of options out there.