What speaker wire do you use with your Ascends?

[curtis]

I am using Home Depot 12 gauge with bananas, but I am thinking about changing to some different just for kicks.

-curtis

[leszek1]

I use the 12 gauge Monster Cable Studio Pro 1000. 10' with dual banana plugs is $40 and 20' is $60. You can also buy it in bulk for $2 a foot. See http://www.monstercable.com/pro_audi...Pro.asp?pin=11 for info.

Leszek

[ez-v]

Canare 4S11 Star-Quad (effectively 11G) from http://heartlandcables.com/. Not the cheapest out their, but I thought they were very well built and look like much more expensive boutique cables. Sigh... I'm such a victim of vanity!

[BradJudy]

ez-v:
That place makes cables with the same things I do: Canare quad speaker and Canare LV-77S interconnects.

$75 for a ten foot pair, eh? To get the same thing with a bit of DIY would be (Canare 4S11 at Markertek 20x $0.70/ft = $14 + $18 for a 100 foot roll of Techflex + $5 for heatshrink + $16 for radioshack gold banana plugs) $53 (cheaper if you have a local place that sells Techflex by the foot). If you figure you spent less than $10 on Techflex that puts you under $45, so you pay a $30+ labor fee. Not too bad depending on your own skills/interest. Similarly the $30 for 1m interconnects would run you maybe $18 DIY and that requires special tools and a bit more work. That's actually not a bad deal if you don't want to invest more time/money in DIY.

[ez-v]

BradJudy,

Agreed. I never said I was ripped off, just that I paid more than I needed to -- could have just gone the Home Depot, Lowes, Parts Express route -- just because I thought the techflexed Canare cables looked nice. Not much of a DIYer so to me, the price was more tahn worth it.

For those of you looking for cables or interconnects with the high-end look and probably better than most on the market in terms of construction and possibly performance if you are one of those who believe in differences between cables, I strongly urge you to check out heartlandcables.com or bluejeanscables.com.

[AjayRav]

Hey Brad and others,

So 'techflexing' the Canare cable is purely cosmetic, right? I might just make myself some DIY speaker cables minus the techflex. Should be an improvement on my RadioShack 14 gauge wire.....On another note, I bundle all of my cables (sat, power cords, speaker) together with cable ties etc behind my stereo rack. If that is the case, how important is shielding of the individual wires?

Thanks,
Ajay

[BradJudy]

Ajay:

Yes, TechFlex is purely cosmetic (it also hides the exact type of cable used for the shops that want to keep you guessing ). If your powercords aren't shielded (most stock electronics ones aren't), I would keep them in a separate bundle from signal cables. Speaker cables usually aren't shielded (some are), but most decent interconnects are shielded.

[picasso]

Monster M2.2 Eight foot lenght at $400. Really brought out the low end.

picasso_04901@yahoo.com

[curtis]

picasso,

Welcome to the board! You must really think highly of your Ascends! That wire cost more than a pair of CBM-170's!!

-curtis

[picasso]

Curtis---

Thanks for the welcoming. Yeah, I know it seems absurd to drive a $328 per pair of speakers with $400 cables. What might be even more absurd is I'm driving them with a Lexicon NT 512 amplifier at a retail of $3500 (got a real bargain though at $1500 new).

But regardless of pricing, it's the music that counts and in my living room, the sound of the music is right.

[] BTW, I ordered a pair of 340's today for the L/R []to match my center channel.

Wahoo! This is going to be fun. The 170's will go to the rear.

picasso_04901@yahoo.com