Best Cable Type for Long Subwoofer cable runs

Balanced XLR if possible as long as both the processor and sub have XLR connectors would be your ideal situation.

In reality though, a good shielded coax subwoofer cable can be just as good. I run a 50' standard coax subwoofer cable with no problems.


Tim

I have a similar question. I've seen some recommendations to use speaker wire for a subwoofer, but the Surroundbar 360 HTIB I'm getting doesn't have connections for extra speakers, only a sub-out connection. I don't know where or what type of sub cable to purchase. Is this cable I can get at Blue Jeans cable or Monoprice?

My room is 20 X 28 and I'm running 5 subs with arbout 72 feet of sub cable and 5 "Y" splitters. No problems with sound or anything else.

Bill

Where do hook all them Y splitters? Buy the receiver. By the subs or both?

Well I'm using a 40 ft one from bluejeans(Canare LV-77S)thats working great so far.

I have 3 50ft RG6 coax cables from monoprice.com .....much cheaper then any other source out there and they are 100% reliable.

Why spend more money when you do not need too!

Although most of my subs are passive so I just run speaker wire too them.

Blue Jeans Cable has an LC-1 analog 50ft sub cable for $64 (seems pretty steep). They also have a Belden for $50. I can't really tell about Monoprice because they don't label anything as "subwoofer cable". I believe I might have found the cable Penngray was speaking of for about $12, but not sure because not labeled as subwoofer cable. I really don't know how much I'm going to need, because I'm not sure where I'm going to be locating my subwoofer. However, where I think I'm going to put it, I'm going to have to go up a wall, over the ceiling, then back down a wall. I estimate I will need around 40' of cable, but want to get 50' just to make sure.

Another question, does sound degrade with the length of cable like say, video can degrade with length of HDMI cable?

Monoprice sells a 75ohm coaxial RCA ended cable (both RG59 and RG6) as their subwoofer cable. They also (correctly) advertise it as a composite video and a digital coaxial audio cable.

http://www.monoprice.com/products/su...02&cp_id=10236

You can swap that cable between your sub, your composite video device (such as a VCR), or your digital coaxial audio device (such as the digital output on a DVD player) and they would all work.

Put two of them together and you have a stereo pair of analog audio cables. Put three of them together and it's a set of component video cables. Might be slightly cheaper to buy the ones that they actually advertise as analog audio or component, but I believe they're all the exact same cable in the end.

Generally speaking, no.

Also, go to http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/subwoofer/index.htm for custom long runs of sub cable.

Bill

Thanks folks. I went with the Monoprice. Hard to beat 50' of cable for $10. If for some reason I have problems in the future and want to buy something more expensive, I'm only out about $18 when you add the shipping.

On similar topic

Will I have an issues with a 50ft RCA/Subwoofer cable connected via female coupler to another 25ft RCA/Subwoofer cable for a loooooong run from pre/pro to subwoofer? I am assuming between RCA and XLR there is no difference in sound quality (and I can just use the pre-out subwoofer port instead of the dedicated sub XLR).


Epik Castle only has RCA inputs (no XLR). So it is a tossup between that and the PB13 Ultra.

I know Bluejeans has custom lengths but are more expensive then monoprice.

As a follow up question. Can I use a long XLR cable (70+ feet) then a separate XLR-RCA (1 foot - daisychained) connector to hook up the Epik Castle?

Will I get the benefit from the XLR output from my pre/pro?


EDIT: I think I found a partial answer

and

Quick question, will there be any noticeable delays by using a longer subwoofer cable than what I really need. I want to buy a 25ft sub cable from monoprice but also debating over the 35ft. I'm not planning a complicated install but just getting longer in case I want to experiment with different placement of the sub. Thanks for any opinions.

An HDMI cable carries a digital signal, your TV either works or it doesn't, there can be no degradation. You will either see a picture of not, does not matter how long a cable you buy, or how much gold plating.

Subwoofer cable on the other hand caries a low power analogue signal (in the case of an amplified sub anyway), which may degrade over distance, but coaxial RCA cables are fairly resistant to interference, you'd need a long run with noisy EM interference to have a problem.

Happen to notice the date on the post you responded to? He's probably got it sorted out by now.

Do I care? I found the post, through search, its quite reasonable to not want misleading information left.