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

Since I am about to build a theater room in my basement I was wondering if there are any advantages to different size speaker wire or the monster brand. Should I use these or is it a waste of money? What gauge wire should I use? I won't have a run over probably 25 feet.
Thanks

Wire table

Monster wants a whole heap of change for their speakers cables (wire!) ... I'd personally suggest either 14 or 12 gauge run-of-the-mill Home Depot/Lowes speaker wire. I'm in the process of building me (uh, I mean the family) a personal go-away-and-leave-me-alone room for our system and I'm running Home Depot or Lowes 12 gauge wire throughout encased in PVC for conduit.

Search through the forums here, Axiom's speaker cable sure gets very high reviews.

You can usually find a roll (200 ft or so) of new, high quality 12 guage wire on ebay for $50-60.

For the price difference, I wouldn't consider 14 guage unless the actual size difference made a problem in running the wire.

Monster cable is definitely overpriced for what you get. No doubt about that.

I purchased a spool, 250ft I believe, off of Ebay of 12 gauge, and used it all the way around for all speakers, may have been overkill, but that is just me.

I too used 12 guage (axiom's) for the whole set-up. Just easy!

I used 12 gauge Monster speaker wire for all my speaker connections. A 100 ft. spool costs about $65, and it's a one-time expense. I know other brands are cheaper, but after spending thousands on speakers, why not get some good quality speaker wire? :-)

I used 12 guage from Blue Jeans Cable, quality cable for about 38 to 40 cents a foot. They will measure and cut cable to the lengths you need.

Richie, any of the copper wire available in places such as Home Depot at quite low cost is in fact "good quality".

JohnK:

Thanks for the info re copper wire. My nearest Home Depot store carries only 16 gauge and 18 gauge speaker wire. The 12 gauge wire would have to be specially ordered. That's why I was forced to buy the Monster 12 gauge wire at Best Buy! :-)