Speaker cables how long

His goal is to educate about home theater and develop more standards in the industry to eliminate consumer confusion clouded by industry snake oil. Confused about what AV Gear to buy or how to set it up? Transmission Lines. Originally published: December 26, The Claim: "Your cable lengths between speakers should be as close to the same as possible.

Rac - The resistive portion of the cables series resistance as a function of frequency due to skin effect. Rs - Total Series Resistance mohms measured tip to tip at one end of the cable while the other end is shorted. Check out our article on Cable Inductance for more info. Cp - Parallel Capacitance pF measured tip to tip at one end of the cable while the other end is open circuited. The major relevancy roles of the dielectric in this application are to serve as isolation between the two conductors and control the capacitance of the cable based on the conductor spacing and dielectric constant.

About the author: Gene manages this organization, establishes relations with manufacturers and keeps Audioholics a well oiled machine. View full profile. Read the Complete Thread.

Speedskater posts on August 01, What would your thoughts be on running thin gauge wire across super long distances? I've been tasked to make it sound better, but I'm scared to suggest that we might be trenching up and replacing all that wire with something thicker. I already tried swapping speakers with the far superior RBH R8s, but didn't make much difference which tells me something else is up. Jersey Jim C, post: , member: An how many cable manufacturers publish their capacitance specs, inclusive of connectors?

And since so many of them make snake-oil claims; why should I believe their specs? All good bulk cable manufactures publish cable specs. Mogami has the most detailed spec sheets. Jersey Jim C posts on July 31, But test leads with clips are available. It's takes a good DMM with a low capacitance value range. As a 3 foot 1 meter cable could read as low as 45 pF. Bill Ferris and dontmindme like this. Messages: 3, According to Yamaha 50' is the maximum length as the SQ will deteriorate after that regardless of gauge of wire used.

Most of them get good reviews with very few issues around SQ. Perhaps there is more involved than just resistance. Messages: 3, Location: Canton, OH. Bill Ferris likes this. Messages: The issue with distance is voltage drop.

That effects many things including damping factor. Guest , Oct 10, Messages: 7, Location: CA. An easy chart full of common sense. Ten and 12 g wire is a pain to work with a lot of the times. I use OFC from Amazon in 16G since my runs are short and I use vintage amps that make using the bigger size wire a pain.

And truly unless one is running an extremely powerful amp in VERY long runs, there is zero need for 10g wire. Bodyblue , Oct 10, Last edited: Oct 10, Power of the amp, efficiency of speakers Djcoolray , Oct 10, GChief and Bodyblue like this. Show Ignored Content. But for those of use with general consumer audio equipment, there is no point in breaking the bank. The wire listed here serves the needs of a vast majority of people. Just one man's opinion.

Blimey, that is a lot of information My amp says it's w. The main speakers say Impedance is 8 ohms and are 80w each. I can't run cables along the floor I have a cat that chews them so Van Damme cabling isn't necessary.

I'll have to go up the wall and across the ceiling, which is what's adding to the extra length I need. Should I still go for AWG12? Thanks ever so much Polly.

Hence why I said Steve's post is information overload. You will be fine with 2. I last used a company called Blue Jeans. Blue Jeans Cable -- Quality Cables at Reasonable Prices Good cables and I purchased the ultrasonically-welded terminated with connectors , to reduce the chances of any poor connections.

If your buying this side of the pond then you should round up the nearest preferred value. Over here they sell in metric, so 2. The chart shows the nearest metric equivalent available, not a mathematically accurate conversion!

In this part of the world the most common gauges are 1. Last edited: Nov 19, Specifically what amp do you have? Without a qualification, the rated w is meaningless. So, no need for monster speaker wire, common wire gauges should work fine. These are the functional wire sizes - 1.

For a vast majority of amps 2. Again, for Rear speakers at a distance, the QED 79 strand 2. Adding terminations like banana plugs is extra. Van Damme differs from consumer speaker cable in that being studio grade it has an outer cover over the two conductors and their own insulation. Click to expand Which is nothing but advertising hype , and makes absolutely no difference to the performance of the cable. The critical factor is thickness , if the wire is copper as its supposed to be , then if its thick enough its good enough , and the brand name doesnt matter at all.

However in professional installations such as studios where cables can suffer more stress then additional protection on cables is worthwhile and that is just plain common sense. NaTT Active Member. This is the stuff Genelec recommend.

NewMB Standard Member. For my new Canton Vento speakers I have gone for 4. In fact, I have always used 4.