In regards to speaker wires, do different brand speakers wires with the same gauge differ? Does interference play a big role in speaker wires, i know it affects rca's, but how speaker wires. I ran out of speaker wire from my install and I am using Knukoncepts 12 gauge braided, i went to several car audio stores in my area and tried to get 12 gauge braided, yet all the one's they offered looked thinner and of inferior quality. I will just wait for my knu wires to come in.

 

Unless it's a shielded wie, wire is wire, plain and simple. I could get just as good of performance using household Romex or a lamp's power cord as others will using $5/foot "special" cable.

 

Yup...all that silver plated hype is BS. Get speaker wire from www.knukonceptz.com

Cheap, and good quality. My whole car is wired with it.

 

Knukonceptz is some good stuff. If it wasnt for you guys, i would of gone with over price, all hype monster cable and paid alot more money. The wires I looked at today where monster cables.. They did not compare to the knukonceptz. So the pure silver wires are BS? I ordered a short amount of that wire to wire from my amp to the cross overs which are located close to the amp. Oh well.

 

You will have less noise with a twisted pair type cable, the signal will be better. A shielded twisted pair would be even better. I used 4 conductor 12 gauge wire with the pairs twisted. I have zero noise in my system. I don't recommend using Romex... as it would would work and it will carry the signal... but you will get noise from it... ay Mac...

 

Speaker wires carry such large voltages the introduction of noise is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. You hear noise when introduced into RCAs because the millivolt level noise signal can be several percent (up to tens of a percent). Those same millivolt levels of noise now constitute sub-single percents of the total signal... inaudible in all but the worst of cases and the most golden of ears.

...but if it makes you feel better, twist the Romex as you run it

 

Well Mac... I design and install computer networks and if you used "romex" for your computer network wire you'd have so much loss and crosstalk between them you'd be hating life, that's the whole reason for using a twisted pair cables.

Did you use romex in your car or speaker wire? and what size wire did you use?

 

John, Computer networks and speaker wire are two TOTALLY different things. You would never use Cat-5 network cable for speakers, would you? Of course not. But if I twisted the Romex with enough turns per inch as to meet the Cat-5 spec, I could easily use it as a network cable, for reasonable length runs (don't forget, my schooling and job background is in low- and high-speed communications design, like audio/video). A Cat-5 cable is nothing special in and of itself, just wire that is spec'd to have a certain # of twists per foot... it's not "99.99% oxygen free", it doesn't use any special shielding, it doesn't use any special cladding, it's just wire (much thinner than Romex at 26 Guage, but simple wire, nonetheless).

Networks operate on the same general voltage levels as amplifier pre-outs (in the 0-10V range, give or take). So again, the level of noise on a network cable can easily become a significant percentage of your signal, thereby corrupting it. Also, comparing corruption of an analog signal (like what's on a speaker wire) to a digital signal (like on a network cable) has faults, as well. Back in the days of analog cable TV, even horrible interference would still allow you to see what was going on... now that we've moved to digital, even minimal noise levels destroy the data stream and freeze the video.

Network equipment is designed from the start to deal with issues like crosstalk and common-mode noise, something a speaker doesn't have the capabilities for, so it serves no purpose to provide them with a cable designed with those specs in mind.

But no, I didn't use Romex to wire my speakers because it would have been overkill (50W x 4 stereo) and harder to work with for the application. Instead, I used a $2 package of 50' el-cheapo speaker wire from Wal-Mart (16 Guage sounds about right). Of course, I don't fill my tires with Helium to make the car lighter, either, even though science tells me it would have an effect on weight... the effect just isn't pronounced enough to make it worth the extra expense.

 

God I used to hate running Cat 5 when I was a network admin at an old job. Especially those long runs. Good point about the Helium. The way I look at it is, the best you can afford might as well get it. With the Knu wires for example, they provide a great wire with a great price.

 

The Purdue EET building has a large quantity of my sweat still in their crawlspaces from running Cat-5. It's amazing what two students did to bring an engineering department up to speed (when they should have been that way before we ever showed up).

There's nothing wrong with spending a few extra dollars to get a wire with a quality sheathing, quality copper for ductility, etc. Just don't overspend because you don't understand the science and some charlatan tricked you into misunderstanding it.