I'm running what I would consider to be a high end amp, high end front speakers, and a high end headunit, but I'm running Wal-Mart speaker wire from Scoche. I can't tell the difference, it looks the same, and it was significantly cheaper. In my experience, RCA's (location and quality) and grounding have always mattered but speaker wire has never mattered.

Tim

 

Hi:
It's almost blaspmony to say that all speaker wire is the same gage for gage but I will weigh in and agree. There is one slight differience, doing rescearch 10 years ago for aircraft wire I found some wire a little better as far as current carying capacity and resistance. It got that way, (this is from Mil specks by the way), because there were many more and smaller strands in the wire giveing more cicular mil area per gage size. The advantage was very slight however, the chief advantage of this wire would be much easier bending and better restance to the effects of flexing. BTW Phill and others say theat the OEM speaker wire is 22 gage which is plenty good for 150 Watts in a bundle.
As far as using romax the only romax I am familiar with is solid wire used in housse wiring and this would be insane to use in a car.
Andy

 

Actually, the main reason to use OFC is to prevent corrosion. Corrosion can and does happen especially in cars.

Like Dan and John, I have a bit of experience with wiring. I can't tell you how much Cat5 I have run too Don't you love commercial jobs and cutting your hands to shreds on metal studs?

Anyway, just use decent wire especially with the interconnects. In high end applications (especially home or studio vs car audio) there is an audible difference in quality interconnects. I have a mid level system with Denon components and Paradigm Reference speakers and I can tell a distinct difference between a standard monster cable and my Straitwire cables.

This will be far less pronounced in a car like our noisy ragtops. But, I used Knu wire as well. Good stuff, good price.

Eric