Where to buy my wires?

Check out mediabridge on amazon,

i 'v bought few of their speaker wires and they work just fine for the price. 

Lowe's or Home Depot. Wire is wire as long as it is the proper (appropriate ) gauge for the wattage and overall length.

I checked out their prices and the appearance of their products on Amazon. The prices mostly look good and the quality seems OK, for everything but the speaker wires. The speaker wires seemed pricey and I couldn't find any that were heavier than 16 gauge. I'd like to see 12 gauge for the price and application.

12 gauge is like the one size fits all solution. Hard to go wrong with it and the slight extra cost and weight is usually not a problem.

For cables like 8 feet long and most speakers (IOW speakers with respectable impedance curves), 14 gauge is fine. 16 would probably work well enough, too.

Thing is having just 16 gauge in your catalog kinda ruins your image as a provider of all reasonable solutions.

If I was going to pay $50 for 8 foot speaker cables, I'd expect better than 16 gauge just because.

Other sources that many people around here use are Monoprice and Blue Jeans Cable. But the big box home improvement stores and local hardware stores can be just fine, too.

Amazon has other brands and no doubt some great prices on 12 gauge.

I just bought 1 100ft spool of 14gauge through monoprice. It is very generic/made in china and it shows - but it functions just fine and does the trick. Wire is wire IMO, unless you go super cheap and it has very few wires inside or something.

If you're doing long runs with the 14gauge, you can double up and use two conductors for + and two for -. I do recommend solid copper wire rather than multiple strands. The stiffness makes it seem like it has a will of it's own, though.

I've got a reasonable long run, about 30 feet (electronics other side of rear wall), so I'm using doubled 13 gauge for front speakers and bass modules, doubled 15 for center, single 15 for highs/wides and something like 18½ for surrounds.

Why?

(1) Desire to struggle harder doing the install.

(2) Desire for a crappier appearance where the wires can be seen.

(3) Desire to have a greater risk of fractures due to flexing and stress.

(4) A minuscule savings in cost.

I hesitate to admit that I've done it both ways... That was just stupid of me. Should have just gotten the stranded wire! Now I do.

*LOL* Spot on, Arnold. Not so certain about (4), think I could have bought cheaper multistranded.

(5) slightly better performance (assuming someone hasn't gone for the wrong insulation, that is)

But if you do have to go for multistranded, go for a kind that has tinplated strands at least.

You forgot

(6) Desire to have the cable pulling the bookshelf speaker off the stands if moving the cable with your foot.

how?

Hard for me to fathom. The stranded and solid wire has the same resistance, inductance, and capacitance per foot subject only to the random variations involved in making anything in the real world. Some think that the stranded wire has less skin effect than the solid but it doesn't.

I figured he would bring up skin effect....which has no signifigance at audio frequencies....but I've read some of his other posts

No currentleaps inbetween strands. Distortion can be measured, there's a questionmark about if it's audible - but why risk it?

I have a vague memory that Supra had a proper scientific article about it once, but I can't find it on their homepage now.

I've read of other potential benefits too, but I don't remember it well enough to put it to writing, sorry.

So why would I? And how come you'd think so, aren't you completely certain about it?

There is nothing uncertain in my post, you, however, seem to be guessing and misremembering a lot...and then claiming it as fact.

Why do these ridiculous cable threads keep popping up?

Folks open up your speakers or amps and look at the wires inside. They are bulk priced, Chinese, off- the -shelf cheap, hook- up wire! NOTHING MORE!

There is NO audible difference between wires of the same gauge. Never has been, never will be.

I'd like to see evidence of measurable distortion due to stranded wire. One might think that if the wire strands were green or black with corrosion that it would be possible to measure this, but so far I've never seen it done and I've tried.

Skin effect is not that hard to measure in the normal audio range with some of the bigger wires, 10, 12 and 14. Been there, done that. Skin effect happens whether the wire is solid or stranded or even separate insulated strands because skin effect is all about magnetic coupling. No actual conduction between the strands is required. It took about 5 different tries for Monster Cable and others to get this right. For the longest time they kept insulating the strands from each other and making ridiculous and false claims.

The solution to skin effect is to eliminate the core which is usually done by making the conductor hollow. You can make a stranded conductor hollow by winding the strands over a non-magnetic core such as a flexible foam plastic rod.

You can measure anything,.....is the effect significant at audio frequencies?

It's called Litz wire...not that it has any effect at audio frequencies though.

Just like monster cable

Which will have drawbacks in the lower frequencies instead, do you agree?

I used standard CL2 #14 AWG stranded twisted intercom cable for the wiring that is installed behind the walls and ceilings.

Between the speaker outlet / speaker input plates and the speaker / AVR is used standard #16 AWG stranded speaker wire for ease of use.

No problems at all.

What made you think it will?

Spot on.

I get such a kick out of commebnts aboutr 'skin effect" etc. Too bad these folks have (evidently )never looked at a component on a board, the copper traces on the board, the wave soldering done on a board using alloy solders, the internal wiring etc. Why is it that after all the myriad audio paths througgh cheap individual components and micro fine copper traces, that all of a sudden the last piece of conductive material- the speaker wires- all of a sudden is a concern? Remember kids, GIGO.
Edited by Gizmologist - 11/29/12 at 5:02pm

No. The low frequencies are handled well by simply having enough circular mils of copper.