I am building a new home and the home has been prewired for 5.1. Long story short, I asked for 14ga and they accidently gave me 16 ga in wall rated cable which I "think" will be okay for my Axioms. To "make up" for the mistake, they gave me custom wall plates w/the speaker outputs for each channel, and while this is nice, I fear that now instead of a direct connection from source to speaker, I now have two extra connections in the stream. Am I being paranoid that this makes a difference over going direct from receiver to speakers? Also, if they used 16 ga, and I have 14 ga going from the wall plates to the speakers, is that an issue? I am tempted to tell them to remove the wall plates and give me just the bare wire coming out unless you guys convince me the wall plates don't make a difference audibly.

Thanks as always.

Kris, the overall resistance in the entire path of wire, etc. is what counts, not the resistance at some small point along the way. The added resistance of the wall plates is over such a short distance as to be inconsequential. The few feet of 14ga going to the speakers doesn't decrease the overall resistance very much as compared to using 16ga all the way, but if you have it, of course use it.

We have all of our in-wall speaker wire terminated with wall plates and I personally wouldn't have it any other way. Whenever I had the system setup in the previous location the speaker wires were connected direct and I simply cannot tell the difference in sound quality with them now connected through wall plates.

i personally would have them install the wire that you ordered in the first place,unless the sheetrock is already installed.
i see too many contractors use cheaper materials to increase their profits and many homeowners dont even notice,pretty s@$^y if you ask me
i would be willing to bet quite a bit that they were well aware of the ga.
im sorry if i put any doubts in your head but building a home in volves a lot and contractors will try to sneak things by you when"youre not looking"that cut their cost.
im not saying there all like that ,but there are quite a few that ive seen
sorry to go on like this but ive seen it too much
btw//good luck with the new home

I too would be upset with the size difference more than the plate issue. Sure, the fewer connection points the better, but that is in an ideal world. I would rather have the larger cable over anything else. So don't worry about the plates, they will look nice and clean, but the points you could argue with the builder (spin it to your advantage) is that 1) the gauge is smaller than you NEED, AND 2) they just added more connection points which will cause a decrease in signal quality and introduce signal noise because it is no longer one solid cable from amp/receiver to the speaker.

Again, this is to try to push them to fix the problem. Will it be earth shattering, no. Will you notice a difference in sound quality, probably not (unless you are using testing equipment). I too hate it when contractors (or anyone for that matter) try to cut corners, or don't do an accurate job and try to cover it up later.

Good luck!

I made a mistake like that, I ordered 16ga from Parts Express, I meant get 14 ga. I hit the wrong button I guess. To fix the problem I doubled up on the 16 gauge, two runs in parallel. I also have the wall plates. The only concern with them is to make sure the connections are tight, both inside the wall and out side. I went back and checked the connetions after a few months, and they seemed a little loose. I like the wall plates a lot for the ease of use factor.

Darth how long are thr runs?

Distance from speaker to amplifier Gauge
Less than 80 feet 16
80 to 200 feet 14
More than 200 feet 12

Snakeyes- The longest run is 25-30 feet tops to the QS8. Thanks!

Kris,

If you requested 14 ga and got 16 ga, I would have them fix it, regardless of what is involved...they made the mistake...you should not suffer for it...the plate offer is just a smoke screen.

Now, on the other hand, I have 16 ga run to my QS8's and it "sounds" to be okay...now I do not have them located as well as I thought I did but they still sound impressive. I wanted them to put 12 ga in the walls but they were going to charge me over $100 a run to put it in...
And they would not "allow" me to run the 12 gauge myself...

It's your house...make them fix it.

My .02.

WhatFurrer