Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions What size speaker cable to run?

I bought a spool of 12 gauge speaker wire off of Ebay for my entire 7.1 setup. It is great quality, and your not paying for the name, like MOnster.

Not to bring up the ol' fight... but looks like sometime this week, depending on time, a long time buddy and I are doing an ABX comparison on copper.

He's agreed my Axiom 12ga. wire is a good example of quality "boutique" wire, and is pretty sure it'll sound better than my wire of choice - SJ-2... 2 conductor, 16ga. extension cord he had sitting in a box... I'm giving him 4 AWGs and I won't clean the oxidation (about 10 years worth) off the ends, just to prove a point. Single-blind ABX comparison, 10 tries... we both agree on a score of 7-8 (7 being a cusp of sorts) or above "correct" being a good number to indicate that there is a difference heard, 3-6 being equivalent to a coin flip, and 0-2 would be an odd result to achieve.

Program material will be a female pop vocalist (something from Lisa's collection - probably Sarah McLachlin) and a jazz piece, both pieces will be something neither of us are familiar with.

Kind of looking forward to it... we're both going into this open mindedly... he wants to know if he "drank the Kool-Aid" (his words) when his boutique cables made his speakers sound better and I wouldn't mind another listening session with even higher stakes (I've done this before with less difference between cables - going to try this real torture test, and if this proves it again, I'll probably try it again with spit-soaked string to find that area where it will finally make an appreciable difference)

Bren R.

Also, for those living near a Princess Auto - 14ga. primary hookup wire is on sale until the 15th - 100ft roll for $8.99, comes in red, black, green, brown, white, blue and yellow.

(that's a single conductor)

Bren R.

Be sure to let us know how it goes. I'll be very interested in your assessments.

I don't know why you are bothering unless you are bored and just want to have some fun screwing around?!@#@!???

In reply to:

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I don't know why you are bothering unless you are bored and just want to have some fun screwing around?

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It came up in discussion when I mentioned that lamp cord at Home Depot had gone up in price... we've had the discussion before, I've had it numerous times and he's now very curious about the phenomena of perception.

Some people will ignore others' point of view, some will immediately accept it, and other, like Missourians ask "Show Me"

Bren R.

This article describes reltively inexpensive cable "upgrade":

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_10_2/ultralink-CL414-cable-5-2003.html

Isn't that Peter's knee-jerk URL post?

Someone here used to keep that on their clipboard ready for posting.

Doubling 14ga. gives you 11AWG effective which is more than plenty for most home runs... unless your rec room is a converted basketball court or something.

Bren R.

Useful 'FAQ' information posted on the top of this page.

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Your Link.

That's my knee jerk post. I haven't used it for many moons, though. I'm sure everyone was sick of clicking it.

I'd like to say that making that cable was fun, but it wasn't. It looks kind of cool, but I've got too much, so it mostly just gets in the way. Oh well...