Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Speaker Wire Preference?

Hey guys. Thanks in advance for your help. Just wondering what's the consensus on speaker wire...gauge? Brand? Price? Is there a difference between regular speaker wire and audiophile grade brands? My speakers include m22's, qs8, vp150. I'm also interested in m60's down the road. Thanks again.

Go 12ga if you can, 14ga will be ample for most people.

Brand does not matter.

heck, I ran with the cheapest "lamp cord" from a local home improvement store for years. I know that Axiom sells some pretty sexy looking stuff, but I got mine all bulk from monoprice.com

Simple, basic, cheap, and it works. Whatever you do, don't believe the sales pitch to buy Monster Cable or the like. Proven to be completely not worth the price.

Belden 5000UE 12/2awg, many strands, flexible, substantial, cheap enough. In wall rated. My bulk cable choice for sure.

I have Belden 5T00UP, 10/2awg for my hi-fi, it is overkill, but still cheap. In wall rated. Measured well in audioholics tests.

Then there's monoprice, a cheap alternative with negligible performance difference at average speaker run length. Good value.

14/2awg is the min size I would recommend for any critical audio installs, though 16/2 is often used for whole house\building structured audio installs with dependable results.

I took home leftover 18/4 sol securex from a fire alarm install job and paralleled the conductors inside of the cable. This yielded somewhere around a 15/2awg size cable. At runs in my HT of ~40' I can't tell the difference between the 10awg conductors. Saved me some $$.

Speaker wire is easy to get carried away on, but remember, where you put your speakers and your room acoustics will affect the sound 5000% more than adding even a dollar to how much you spend on speaker wire. Just get 12 or 14 awg and focus on the next battle.

sorry nickbuol, writing at same time and you beat me to it.

No worries.

Yeah, this time around I went for the in-wall rated stuff too.



Like this stuff, only I got a LOT more than 50 feet.

Pretty easy to work with and about half the price of other similar stuff out there. I used to use companies like Blue Jeans Cable as a "low cost" alternative to the other brand name stuff, but even the Monoprice stuff is pretty great and the value is even better. I wired up all A/V stuff for my entire basement using Monoprice cables, wires, keystones (wall jacks) etc. I spent about $750 or something on all of it and only had 1 thing fail. A 75 foot HDMI cable that was DOA. Returned it and got a replacement that worked. Outside of the speaker wire, it was the single most expensive item at about $70, but the return process was easy.

I wish I could have got that price in Canada.
Best price I found was around $135 including expedited freight for 250ft of the same cable.

Don't forget that Monoprice uses UPS so you need to add about a $80 brokerage fee to the total price.

Mike, welcome to Axiom. There really is no such thing as "audiophile grade" speaker wire since the term "grade" implies that it's actually significantly better in helping transmit audio information. Blind testing indicates that this is purely BS(Before Science).

Speaker wiring and interconnecting cables are two areas notorious for snake oil salesmen. This explanation of speaker wiring realities by a veteran audio professional has helped a lot of people avoid being played for suckers. Gauge of wire is the significant factor, and the length of the run together with the impedance of the speaker determine the advisable gauge(as shown in Mr. Russell's table).

Once you've determined the gauge you need(I use 16ga)and whether you're going to use wiring with an outer jacket suitable for behind-the-wall installation, there are several sources to get it at low cost. Local hardware suppliers such as Home Depot and Lowes can cut it to order. Online suppliers such as MonoPrice and several others are readily available.

Get some in wall wire, then head to ebay and get some sheathing and some cable pants finish off with banana plugs and you can make some inexpensive speaker cable that looks expensive and works great.. Its also a fun project.
Wire Pants

Flex sleeve

I bought from a Canadian retailer.