What Size of Wire Should I Use for Aftermarket Deck?

Hi,

I have a Sony CDX-M730 which is rated at 52w and running Boston Acoustic RX57s (full range 5 1/4" speakers).

Q1. I understand that I will benefit from running a larger size wire. If am not going to upgrade my deck nor add an amplifier to the system, what gauge should I use?

Q2. I am also considering adding RX47 (4" full range) for the rear and call my audio upgrade complete. Will this improve my sound?


Thanks in advance

Song

 

If the instructions for your deck call for a larger wire, then the consensus is that it's probably a good idea. Otherwise, you can just tap the stock power wire from the factory harness.

 

I meant upgrading speaker wires.
Sorry about the ambiguity in my writing.

S

 

My fault. I should have read that more carefully. That deck is rated at 23 watts RMS per channel, so the stock wiring will be fine for the fronts if you're not going to run an amp. Based on the no-amp assumption, I would definitely do the rear speakers while you're in there. At the very least, go ahead and add two short runs of speaker wire from the HU to the area of the rear panels. This will make the future addition of rear speakers easier -- just make sure to tape up the wires and not let them touch if you don't connect speakers. 18 GA speaker wire will work, but I'd run 16 just to give you some headroom. Just my suggestions. Good luck and have fun with the install!

 

Thanks SC_Highlander. 16 gauge it is then.
I'm going to try to find some oxygen fee wires. Do you think insulation on the home audio stuff is different from car audio stuff? I found out that home audio speaker wires are more reasonably priced than the car audio counterparts(I'm being nice here). But maybe the car audio stuff is made to endure more harsh conditions.

Song

 

16 Guage will be just fine. Technically, you could run Romex (the stuff they wire houses with) and you'd be perfectly fine, but it's a bitch to bend around corners. The stuff they sell as speaker cable at Wal-Mart for 30' runs for $3.99 is good enough...that's what I'm running in mine.

 

Make sure you don't run the new wire near any or as little power lines as possible. You might get line static.
Dan I hope your kidding about the "Romex" hehe cause man that's crazy. Always use stranded wire, it will conduct the signal better and its much easier to install.... course you mentioned that part.

 

Correct on the second part, but dead wrong on the first part. While increased signal conduction in stranded wire has a basis, that basis comes from using high-frequency signals (the "skin effect" that I'm always mentioning in my wire posts), something audio just doesn't quite fit into. If you want to get technical, amp for amp, Romex will fit into tighter places because you're not wasting space between strands (although the savings is so minor as to be considered pointless for the guages we're using in our cars).

If I was building a car from the ground up, I would use stranded for the doors (since they flex a lot) and something akin to Romex for everything else since I could lay it out once and forget about it (by building it from the ground up I mean no carpet, no seats, no grommets, just bare metal I can stand up straight in).

 

You talking about a space so small in a stranded wire that in our car or even in a home you'd never notice the difference. If you take a 12 gauge solid and a 12 gauge stranded wire the Internal Impedance or "Skin Effect" will be almost exactly the same. Not to mention if its 12 gauge its still 12 gauge solid or stranded,(like a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers either way it still weights a ton) By the way how do you figure a solid line will take up less space the jacket takes up the same place? If it made such a difference then I'm sure the industry would use a solid conductor course they don't...but whatever.....If the industry was concerned about it so much then they would make it a standard to use a "Litz" wire. A Litz wire would be the best thing for use in a car.

Good call on the "dead wrong" comment.....thanks a lot brainyack

just my .02

 

Exactly...

As long as we're talking about audio frequencies...

I was being somewhat pedantic here. Looking stricty at the copper, to get the same cross-sectional area for a particular Guage you would need a larger outer circumferance due to the "lost" copper area between individual strands. As you said, by the time you move back up to the macroscopic scale of humans and add on insulation, it's a moot point. Just me being anal about the description...

Oh God, don't start another audio fad Next thing you know they'll be packaging Litz wire up in $20/foot boxes and selling it as the Holy Grail of audio wire In a nutshell, though, there really IS no difference between solid and stranded at audio frequencies, so the industry is going to default to stranded since it's easy to work with. <blah> Conversations like this one make me want to go install some more equipment in my car