Speaker cable quality

[musicguy]

I know this might be a mood point. But my center channel sounded a little more open fuller when i used a better speaker cable. Anybody else experiment with better cable on the center channel. How important is this? Yes im new to AV. Always been a 2 channel guy.

Thanks for you thoughts.

[Stump909]

Were the gauges different? From everything I've read, once you reach a certain level of quality (which isn't too hard to attain), more expensive cables will not provide an improvement. Maybe the original wire was defective or corroded?

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

The two popular brands on the net are monoprice and blue jean cables. Both are inexpensive, and meet all realistic needs. Don't buy into the nonsense that a 500 dollar speaker wire will make any difference.

[chas]

Ascend sells some good quality wire (on the Accessories page):

http://www.ascendacoustics.com/pages...ccssintro.html

[Dread Pirate Robert]

I know this might be a mood point. But my center channel sounded a little more open fuller when i used a better speaker cable. Anybody else experiment with better cable on the center channel. How important is this? Yes im new to AV. Always been a 2 channel guy.

As long as the resistance of the cable is kept reasonably low, personally I've never been able to perceive any differences. It wouldn't hurt to use a thicker cable (thicker copper conductor, that is) than necessary, and the same goes for cables of higher build quality, but if you do so it would be for peace of mind rather than a perceivable improvement in sound quality, in my opinion.

Were the gauges different? From everything I've read, once you reach a certain level of quality (which isn't too hard to attain), more expensive cables will not provide an improvement.

That's right, one may measure a bit better than the others in capacitance and/or inductance, for example, but for speakers this doesn't matter in practical terms as long as you use something like lamp cord or better--just two copper conductors of sufficient thickness (important, as this can make a difference), stranded or solid (stranded is generally preferred because it is more flexible and resilient for convenience and peace of mind, respectively).

Maybe the original wire was defective or corroded?

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

The thing about cheaper cables is that they seem to stand a greater chance of corroding, but then again if you're using enough copper, according to the chart linked above, then it shouldn't have a noticeable effect (unless it corroded all the way through or significantly along most of its length, but that's fairly unlikely).

The two popular brands on the net are monoprice and blue jean cables. Both are inexpensive, and meet all realistic needs. Don't buy into the nonsense that a 500 dollar speaker wire will many any difference.

Exactly, nobody's ears could detect a difference anyway, as the speaker--a mechanical device with moving parts--is always the weakest link in the audio chain. The two-conductor cables from BJC are affordable and made in the USA by Belden, a major supplier of professional cables. The cables from Monoprice will sound just as good for about half the price, though.

I use the 12 AWG cable from BJC myself for some peace of mind, but I can't tell a difference from the old 18 AWG (much thinner) Home Depot lamp cord that I had been using, even though the latter was slightly but noticeably oxidizing inside the insulation. It just feels better to use a quality cable of more than adequate size, as long as it's reasonably priced. Well, actually, I believe that the thicker gauge does help with the long runs to my surrounds, which seem to sound better now (with no formal testing), but the front speakers sound exactly the same as before--either I imagine hearing a difference in the surrounds or the resistance was too high before, as indicated by the above chart (use the 4 ohm column for Ascend Acoustics speakers).

[wader2k]

"(use the 4 ohm column for Ascend Acoustics speakers)"

I thought the 170 and 340's were rated at 8 ohm?

[Dread Pirate Robert]

I thought the 170 and 340's were rated at 8 ohm?

It's never quite that simple. Their average impedances are about 8 ohms, as specified, but if you look at their impedance graphs, all of Ascend's speakers reach down to about 5 or even 4 ohms in certain frequency ranges. This is not uncommon among speakers in general, although some "8 ohm" nominal impedance speakers never do go much lower than 8 ohms (while others do). To be safe, I thought I'd recommend the 4 ohm column in the speaker wire table, so that the resulting frequency response of each speaker does not noticeably begin to mirror its impedance graph.

As for "nominal" impedance ratings, I'm not even sure what that means or if there is an industry standard way of determining it in the first place. Notice that Dave doesn't provide such a spec, not because he's hiding anything but probably because it doesn't tell us much. Whether a speaker is difficult or easy for amplifiers to drive additionally depends on its electrical phase graph, and matching each of these up against their corresponding impedance graphs shows that they should be relatively easy to drive for most every amp (because the phase is always near zero when the impedance gets low, which means that with regular program material the amp is not going to be overly stressed and overheat). So they're all broadly compatible with regular "8 ohm" amps (that's all we need to know), but when we're talking about wire resistance, I feel better taking those 4 ohm impedance dips into account.

[wader2k]

Gotcha. Nothing is ever simple!

[billy p]

All you need to know about speaker wire?


http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

[davef]

All you need to know about speaker wire?


http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

There is some good information at that site - also some not so good...

[davef]

It's never quite that simple. Their average impedances are about 8 ohms, as specified, but if you look at their impedance graphs, all of Ascend's speakers reach down to about 5 or even 4 ohms in certain frequency ranges. This is not uncommon among speakers in general, although some "8 ohm" nominal impedance speakers never do go much lower than 8 ohms (while others do). To be safe, I thought I'd recommend the 4 ohm column in the speaker wire table, so that the resulting frequency response of each speaker does not noticeably begin to mirror its impedance graph.

As for "nominal" impedance ratings, I'm not even sure what that means or if there is an industry standard way of determining it in the first place. Notice that Dave doesn't provide such a spec, not because he's hiding anything but probably because it doesn't tell us much. Whether a speaker is difficult or easy for amplifiers to drive additionally depends on its electrical phase graph, and matching each of these up against their corresponding impedance graphs shows that they should be relatively easy to drive for most every amp (because the phase is always near zero when the impedance gets low, which means that with regular program material the amp is not going to be overly stressed and overheat). So they're all broadly compatible with regular "8 ohm" amps (that's all we need to know), but when we're talking about wire resistance, I feel better taking those 4 ohm impedance dips into account.

Wonderful post Dread, and dead-on with regard to loudspeaker impedance. Thanks!