Home » Sponsored » Pi Speakers » 14ga romex for speaker cable and X/O wiring
14ga romex for speaker cable and X/O wiring [message #35931] Thu, 11 April 2002 21:10 Go to next message
mhammill is currently offline  mhammill
Messages: 23
Registered: May 2009
Chancellor
I know you recommend 16 or 18ga stranded wire and don't like the magnet wire due to the high resistance, but is there any problem with using 14ga solid core house wiring? It's cheap and low in resistance for longer distances like I need between my living and dining room areas.
And would it be good to twist it together or separate the pos and neg runs?
Thank's
Mike H.
Speaker cable and wire properties [message #35938 is a reply to message #35931] Fri, 12 April 2002 12:23 Go to previous message
Wayne Parham is currently offline  Wayne Parham
Messages: 18748
Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)

14 guage wire will work just fine. Speaker circuits are low impedance balanced pairs, which is about as tolerant and invulnerable to noise as you can get. But I think I would still twist the wires together to form a braid.

If you put signal wires in a metal conduit, make sure the conduit is grounded. Never run wires in an ungrounded conduit, particularly low-power, unbalanced signal wires, because the ungrounded conduit will actually couple AC noise into the signal wires, acting as a sort of concentrator.

Here's a link to a page about Belden's speaker cable, and it includes a chart of size/power/distance/ for sound systems. This type of product is best, even better than exotic "boutique" cables. For those of you that like to wind your own coils, here's a good program that gives specifications of various magnet wire products.

Previous Topic: a few more pics up
Next Topic: higher than 6th order Bandpass?
Goto Forum:
  


Current Time: Wed Aug 14 11:19:47 CDT 2024

Sponsoring Organizations

DIY Audio Projects
DIY Audio Projects
OddWatt Audio
OddWatt Audio
Pi Speakers
Pi Speakers
Prosound Shootout
Prosound Shootout
Miller Audio
Miller Audio
Tubes For Amps
TubesForAmps.com

Lone Star Audiofest