Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo There's NO turning back now!!

OMG I did it I placed my order for the m60s!! I'm in quite a frenzied state so let me borrow your minds. What do I do about cables?

This should be good!

buy some, if you dont have any!!!

for real, if you are talking about speaker cables, then just get a good 12 or 14 gauge wire depending on how long you are running it.

now depending on who you talk to, and what forum you are in, you will get about 20 different opinions on speaker wire. my general belief is that, as long as you get a good 12 gauge, you cant go wrong. you can get a good quality 12 gauge at home depot for $.30 cents a foot.. a lot of installers in this forum will back this up..

now if you want to feel as though you are getting the 'BEST' and got the money, then sure, go get monster, or any of the other name brand wires.. i personally think they are WAY over priced.. and in a side by side study, i would bet you could never tell the difference between monster or $.30 cent home depot..

good luck, and dont sweat the small stuff..

bigjohn

Well i for one would rather have the Higher end cables but go ahead an get u some of the Cheaper stuff try that out if u like it stay with it , remember it is your Ears so listen an see what u think, if u wanna try something Higher end jus to ease your Curiosity then do it . But what i think u should do is get your 60's U dawg lol but get the cheaper cable listen for a few months b4 u decide if u want to upgrade or not

Get some home depot 12 ga. It's as good as funky expensive stuff.

Plug and listen. Make sure your neighbors aren't home and blast it. what are you hooking them up to?

Hey Ravi, I will be hooking them up to a Denon 1604-music only. I have some 16 ga at home that I used with the bookshelves that I was auditioning earlier but I don't suppose that would work with the m60s.

There is a home depot right where I live so I think for now I will go with that...

These three days waiting for them to arrive is going to be pure agony.

Roti, your present 16ga wire will work fine if the length of your run isn't more than 30' or so, which isn't likely for front speakers. The new M60s don't need new wire; the electrons don't wear out. Don't waste your money.

JohnK's got it right (again).

In fact your old wire may be better since the electrons in the wire have been jostled sufficiently from repeated use and are no longer clinging tightly to their copper nuclei. This electron loosening process allows the audio signal to travel more smoothly over the wire, and is otherwise known as cable break-in.........

Oh lordy. You can probably safely ignore the second part of that post...

Yeah. These guys in a white van at the mall told me all about electrons and copper wire. They said they had that kind of wire in their $2000 speakers they would sell me for as much money as my atm card would let me take out in a day....

;-p

jr

Best post ever, on "wires".......What about connector break-in?

in order to speed along the break-in process and to excercise the electrons, I generally microwave my connectors for 3 minutes and 27 seconds on power setting 8 using a Panasonic unit coverted to 220 and supplied with a natural gas fail-safe backup genny to ensure clean power...

Those little bastards are hot, so be careful but I find that they increase my amp's wattage by a factor of 1.4%, extend the frequencies of the highs to 200kHZ and have been known to cause the mower to trim the lawn on hot days without my help.

Worth a shot.

^billy

everyone's joking, right?

its hard to tell sometimes, eh!!

yes, jokes a-plenty. kinda like high-beam fluid, or a record humidifier.. just figments of our fantasy driven imaginations.

when i first got to this forum, i was bookmarking all these posts thinking, "hey, thats great info i have never heard before".. turns out, i had never heard it, cause it was all made up. just trying to keep things light.

bigjohn

Denon 1604 - good pick. I have the 1602 and for the price i found it was really the best thing i could have bought.

enjoy, enjoy... if you have no sub, set the speakers to loud and just enjoy

Yes, Roti, we're playing around, except that you don't need new speaker wire.

*pheew*
Ive been reading up on these stuff a lot, but I didn't I missed THAT much...

oh and BTW THEY HAVE ARRIVED AND ARE ON THE VAN FOR DELIVERY!!

Talk about INCREDIBLE service!!

Hey Ravi,

What volume level do you have on your 1602 normally? With my m60s and the denon 1604, I have to up the volume to at least +15 to get a good full sound. Is that a little unusual?

+15 is as high as my 2802 will go! With my 2802 and M60s, I usually listen at -35 w/ wife present, -25 w/out wife, -20 w/out wife and having a beer, -10 w/out wife and three sheets to the wind. Better check your connections and settings.

Wow! I'm with Bigwill. There might be something wrong with your equipment or your ears if you can't get "full" sound below +15. I have run my 1804 at -10 briefly for what seems like "really freakin' loud" on my M60's in a pretty big room. -15 for movies seems *plenty* loud.

Sorry guys, typo there. I can just picture the bulging eyes. I really meant -15!! Between -10 to -15 is how I REALLY like it. But most of the time I have it between -18 to -25 in my 15 x 12 bedroom. Is THAT unusual? Does wire gauge affect anything? Right now I have connected through 16ga bare ends. Haven't had time to run to get banana plugs.

Whew. That's a relief.

At -10 to -15, it's "pretty loud" right?

How long are your wire runs? If they are not too long, going to 12 or 14 probably won't make a noticable improvement in volume. I tend to use 12 gauge on everything, but the generic kind at partsexpress.com, not the esoteric kind. I'm not a believer.

I think bare ends are fine. [insert bawdy witticism here].

Banana plugs will probably only help you if you plug and unplug things a lot. Other than that, I am personally not convinced they make a quantifiable improvement in the sound. But I will be burned at the stake for audio heresy eventually, I suppose.

I do not move things around a lot but I might eventually invest in some plugs just to experiment a little bit. Right now I'm a little tentative on raising the volume on the m60s driven by the denon 1604, on a 16ga cable. What do ya'll think would be 'toomuch' ?

Also 'pretty loud' kinda depends on time of day and what I'm doing at that moment, on a sunday morning it couldn't be loud enough but on a thursday night before bed its plenty loud.

Roti, too much won't be until the 1604 would grossly distort(the cable has nothing to do with it)on some extreme peak. Nobody can tell you when that will be. Bear in mind that at a comfortably loud listening level the M60s will be using about 1-2 watts from the 1604. On very brief extreme peaks 50 watts or more can be used, but your ears may give out first. It depends on the volume of your listening room, how far away you are, and how high the peaks are on the music that you're playing.