What's the difference between your average set of speaker wire you can get at some place like Radio Shack compared to Monster Cable? Is there enough of a difference to justify the price difference?
Wayne Parham Messages: 18675 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
Some people get real excited about speaker wire. Myself, I am mostly looking at the conductor material and size. I prefer stranded cable too, which has some technical benefits at HF, but actually those benefits are mostly realized at frequencies above the audio band. Still it doesn't hurt. It's easier to work with too, as solid core wire isn't flexible. So it all boils down to size, in my opinion. A good pure-copper, low guage (large), stranded speaker cable is what I look for.
AudioFred Messages: 377 Registered: May 2009 Location: Houston
Illuminati (1st Degree)
I've compared Monster cable to zip cord and couldn't hear any difference. However, I do hear a difference between zip cord and Belden 5000 series cable, which is sold by Blue Jeans cable for a very reasonable price. The Belden provides much better resolution with a variety of speakers whose individual drivers cost anywhere from $13 to $220. http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/speaker/index.htm
Wayne Parham Messages: 18675 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
Great article, thanks for posting the link!
That's definitely how I look at speaker wire.
As an aside, I must have forgotten that those PDFs were available online. Seems like I vaguely remember someone saying they were available, but I forgot. I bought all the back issues, but it's definitely handy to be able to post links to those articles.
To my ears solid core wire is far superior sounding to stranded. Give some 14 ga magnet wire a try for your speakers... it's not very expensive, so if you try it and don't like it you're not out very much.
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