Picking the right size speaker cables
While searching online for advice on speaker cables, you might have noticed an ongoing debate, both online and offline in stores, about speaker cables, their types, sizes, and throughput to your speakers. This can be quite confusing for those who recently purchased new equipment, such as a new AV receiver, speakers, or additional speakers to enhance a surround setup.
I’m diving into this ongoing debate and will try to convince you to not let yourself be bullied or coerced into buying unnecessary items. To do this, I’ll first provide some information about speakers, their internal construction, the cables used by speaker manufacturers, and how this knowledge can help you choose the right speaker wires for your setup.
Speaker internals
Speaker cable manufacturers often make you believe that a larger and thicker speaker cable is inherently better at transmitting your audio signals to your loudspeakers. While this is partially true, there are indeed specific minimum and maximum widths that are beneficial. This does not mean that you will need elephant-trunk size cables for your speakers.
Internal wiring
When loudspeaker manufacturers construct their loudspeakers, they require internal wiring to transmit the input power from your amplifier or AV receiver, which is connected to the speaker terminals, to the crossover board and subsequently to the actual drivers.
As you can see in the picture, the in-ceiling loudspeaker system has two separate drivers. The wires (red and black) connecting to the woofer driver are slightly thicker than those (blue and white) connecting to the mid-high driver. This is by design, and the reason for this is simple.
Bass vs. High
Bass is radiated outwards by the woofer by making the speaker move the air, just as any loudspeaker works. As the woofer needs to move more air to make the low sounds that form the bass, the driver ( woofer ) that does this requires more power to be moved. A a result you will notice that many loudspeaker manufacturers will use internal wiring of - in general - 2.5 mm copper wire in x-number of strands per wire.
The number of strands are not that important, what is important is that the total core thickness is around 2.5 mm. That's the best size.
High frequency drivers do not need to make large excursions to move the air as they run higher ( shorter ) frequencies. Therefore they only require 1.5 mm copper wire cable which is more than enough to drive these.
Note : Some manufacturers like Klipsch will use silver-coated wire for their mid-high frequency drivers as this silver-coated wire has a slightly higher transmission rate for the power the driver needs, which results in measurable high frequency enhanced output.
How about Surround?
Right! So you have a surround set-up with:
- rear speakers
- rear surround speakers
- side speakers
- front high speakers
- front atmos speakers
Well if you have all of these or just a selection of these options, then rest assured that you can use 1.5 mm copper core cable easily to run all your surround speakers.
The reason for this is that - as shown in the picture - the woofers ( if any ) in the surround speakers often are small and below 12 cm diameter or less. They only have to convey effects, reflections of sound echoing in the movie, concert etc to give you the feeling of being there and/or to offer you the feeling of being in a larger room then your living room actually is.
For example the " Cathedral " setting in most AV-receivers that gives the impression you are listening to a performance of your favorite artist , while sitting in a large cathedral. That exact effect comes mainly from your surround speakers and if you would turn down or turn off your front speakers you'd notice that the emissions from your surround speakers are flat and on frequencies above 3000 hz and higher.
Due to this the speakers do not need a big excursion to make a lot of sound waves, they do contribute but on a higher level, a hight frequency level to be exact.
Such being the case, you will have all the effects from them you want by just running 1.5 mm core audio cable from your receiver speaker terminals to the surround speakers . Just make sure you hook up the correct speaker to the correct output. :)
What wire do I need?
Now we're getting to the nitty gritty of this How to.
Some companies out there will have you believe that the thicker the cable is that runs from your amplifier to your speakers, the better it is. This is partially true up to the part where it has a 2.5 mm core.
Anything over a 2.5 mm core is spending money that's not needed. As you have learned in the previous section, speaker manufacturers themselves use - at best - also 2.5 mm core speakers.
Standard 2.5 mm core loudspeaker cable at your DIY store average € 0,50 / meter
How about audiophile cables?
Yep, I know there are cables out these that will cost as much as s a brand new luxury car. An example to this are the Ansuz Speakz loudspeaker cables shown here. These range about € 90.000 Euro for a set of 2 cables of 3 meter length.
Who am I to tell you not to spend that kind of money but the only thing that works here is the belief that when you spend that much money on cables it just has to sound better. If you believe it, then it will be true !
For the rest of us that do not have such deep pockets or that are just not that gullible, get some 2.5 mm copper core cable and you can run them up to 15 meter without any noticeable loss to your sound.
Enjoy your music and keep some money in your pocket at the same time.
The final judgment
So for general usage you can go with these rules of thumb :
- Bookshelf, Center and Floor standing speakers : 2.5 mm copper core
- Surround and Atmos speakers and similar : 1.5 mm copper core
Anything bigger than these measurements is probably wasting your money on things you do not need practically. However, it's your choice !
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