Speaker cabling/wires

Author
Discussion

M1AGM

Original Poster:

2,290 posts

31 months

Saturday 18th June 2022
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I am going to put in speaker wire to run multiple room in-ceiling speakers (tbd) to sonos amps I will house in the loft. A friend who was big into hi-fi used to bang on about not all speaker cables being equal and would spend a fortune on gold plated type stuff that was eye-watering per metre. Before I buy, is it all snake oil, and will any speaker cable do the job just as well as the crazy expensive stuff?

jfdi

1,033 posts

174 months

Saturday 18th June 2022
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So long as your not using bell wire, you'd be hard pressed to notice much difference in most cables. For within the building structure twin and earth will be hard to beat on cost.

markiii

3,565 posts

193 months

Saturday 18th June 2022
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to an extent he's right, but I'd only bother much about cables in a dedicated room with dedicated speakers. For whole house audio with ceiling speakers where ambiance is higher priority than the last 10% sound quality, some basic 79 strand OFC stuff should be fine

darreni

3,759 posts

269 months

Saturday 18th June 2022
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M1AGM

Original Poster:

2,290 posts

31 months

Saturday 18th June 2022
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Great responses thank you.

stewartm

63 posts

126 months

Saturday 18th June 2022
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+1 on what markiii said.

In a past career as a sound engineer I heard audible impacts from some crazy small changes in wiring, but that was listening in a room purpose designed for listening for that kind of stuff - not really relevant in real world applications. I also recall reading about a Japanese gent who had dug two troughs in his living room floor filled with mercury to use as 'speaker wire' tho possibly not practical for the rest of us wink

I would say it would be worth keeping the cable lengths as similar as possible tho.

Mr Pointy

11,147 posts

158 months

Saturday 18th June 2022
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All you need is a decent amount of copper in the cable so just look at where you can get your best bang for your buck. Flex is easier to use than solid core twin & earth & it's not the best idea to see the mains coloured cores so at the very least sleeve them in something if you do use mains cable. Automotive red & black flat twin might be a good source to look at.

Cable with a decent anount of copper in it isn't cheap though. Be wary of seemingly cheap cable like this as it's CCA - copper clad aluminium.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmazonBasics-16-Gauge-Spe...

Tony1963

4,699 posts

161 months

Saturday 18th June 2022
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stewartm said:
I would say it would be worth keeping the cable lengths as similar as possible tho.
Really doesn’t make a difference. I’ve compared, never heard anything wrong. Maybe in extremes of say thirty metre runs and one metre runs there could be an issue, but I wouldn’t worry.

tonyg58

355 posts

198 months

Sunday 19th June 2022
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A point to make regarding this is for some properties (I don't know the specifics sorry), if you cut holes in the ceiling for speakers,you are cutting in to a fire break.You have to make sure the firebreak is reinstated by putting a fire hood over the speakers.
Please check with someone who knows more about the regulations than me.
This also also a reason for using the LSZH cable that there is a link to earlier in the thread(LSZH - low smoke zero halogen).

Denis O

2,141 posts

242 months

Monday 20th June 2022
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I've just had a house built so took advantage of having the speaker cables built in.

I used QED 79 strand for the 2 Naim systems rather than NACA5 at 5 times the cost.

The QED sounds just fine.

Lucid_AV

408 posts

35 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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tonyg58 said:
A point to make regarding this is for some properties (I don't know the specifics sorry), if you cut holes in the ceiling for speakers,you are cutting in to a fire break.You have to make sure the firebreak is reinstated by putting a fire hood over the speakers.
Please check with someone who knows more about the regulations than me.
This also also a reason for using the LSZH cable that there is a link to earlier in the thread(LSZH - low smoke zero halogen).
^ This.

Fire safety is important.

For cable, the LSZH cables will help prevent fire tracking from one area to another.


Regarding sizes, I wouldn't use anything less than a 1.3~1.5mm cross sectional area (CSA). It's possible to make a case for 2.5mm based on voltage drop versus cable cost for longer runs.

Based on an all-copper cable, at 30m, a 2.5mm cable will lose around 10% of the amplifier power due to cable resistance. For the same distance, a 1.3mm cable will lose about 20%. Amplifier Watts are expensive to buy (bigger amp, lots more money). Power is expensive too. It makes sense not to waste it in the simple passive loss of a bit of copper wire.

Sporky

6,087 posts

63 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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Tony1963 said:
stewartm said:
I would say it would be worth keeping the cable lengths as similar as possible tho.
Really doesn’t make a difference. I’ve compared, never heard anything wrong. Maybe in extremes of say thirty metre runs and one metre runs there could be an issue, but I wouldn’t worry.
You can do the sums quite easily.

The phase difference will be immeasurable - signals go about 10,000km a second along copper.

The extra impedance might make a difference, but there are calculators online. If the cable is big enough for the 30m run (at the system impedance and power levels) then it'll be big enough for the 1m run.

I'd just run the sums and buy OFC cable of the right gauge. As has been said, avoid copper clad aluminium - it's rubbish.

mikef

4,826 posts

250 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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stewartm said:
I would say it would be worth keeping the cable lengths as similar as possible tho.
Given your background Stewart, that's interesting. Like I'm sure many people I have my amp to one side of the speaker pair and have previously used same-length cables - but that leaves to an untidy coil and I do wonder whether a coiled cable might cause interference - so as I'm rewiring I was thinking of ordering one 2-metre and one 4-metre cable

My cable of choice has been moderately-priced AudioQuest X2 ( link), mainly because the two strands are colour-coded... I'm sure someone will tell my I'd be as well off with bell wire smile

bcr5784

7,102 posts

144 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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stewartm said:
+1 on what markiii said.

I would say it would be worth keeping the cable lengths as similar as possible tho.
+1 I learnt long ago that significant differences in length left to right channels make a noticeable (even without golden ears) to the sound/balance.

Diderot

7,264 posts

191 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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There'll be more serious acoustical issues to contend with in the average living room than worrying about what length cables you have or indeed how much the cabling costs.



megaphone

10,694 posts

250 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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If you're installing cables through joists and walls etc then run them in flex which is tougher than fig-8 speaker cable. 1.5mm 2 core flex is what we use for our installs. 2.5mm if it's a higher powered system. Save some £.

And remember, thicker cores are more difficult to terminate in speakers and amps, many will only accept 1.5mm.

M1AGM

Original Poster:

2,290 posts

31 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
quotequote all
darreni said:
I’ve had a delivery of this stuff (thanks for the link). Will be ‘first fixing’ it into the house tomorrow, the next question will be ceiling speakers…..

I like B&W but seems much of the good stuff is out of stock.

dundarach

4,963 posts

227 months

Tuesday 21st June 2022
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Having spent lots and not so lots on cables over the years, the last lot I bought was Amazon stuff

https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmazonBasics-16-Gauge-Spe...

It cut lovely and was very easy to work with.

stewartm

63 posts

126 months

Wednesday 22nd June 2022
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mikef said:
Like I'm sure many people I have my amp to one side of the speaker pair and have previously used same-length cables - but that leaves to an untidy coil and I do wonder whether a coiled cable might cause interference
It is a thing, as dependent on signal strength the coil forms an inductor (although I am already talking above my pay grade then, from the POV of electronics expertise). You can partake in 'non-inductive coiling' which comes in two forms:

1) either every coil, or switch after a coil or two, you reverse the direction of the coil (slightly hard to describe) but the upshot is half the coil ends up going clockwise and the other half anticlockwise, which cancels out the inductive effects

2) you just scrunch all the cable up, push it in, close the lid and forget about it, knowing the entirely random mess of cable will have no inductive effect wink

Sporky

6,087 posts

63 months

Wednesday 22nd June 2022
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stewartm said:
It is a thing, as dependent on signal strength the coil forms an inductor (although I am already talking above my pay grade then, from the POV of electronics expertise).
I did a fair bit of electromagnetics in my electronic engineering degree, and hated it. So I'm not doing the sums, but my strong and reasonable educated suspicion is that a few metres of copper in a fairly large loop, with no core, is going to produce at most an insignificant level of inductance.