Hi all,

I'm in the process of building a reasonably good HT system and after getting alot of my ideas, feedback, opinions etc etc off the DTV forums, one part of it I thought would be an easy task, without having to research too much, would be the speaker cables but I tell you, after spending a fair bit on equipment, I thought the last thing I want to do is ruin it with poor cabling so I've posted my first topic to hopefully ask people to help me through their experiences and possibly professional opinions. I have a Pioneer SCLX-71 which will be driving a B&W MT-30 speaker setup 5.1, possibly 7.1. I've already run the wall runs when I renovated years ago with what I was told was professional grade 12 gauge figure 8 cable which hasn't caused any noticible loss of sound quality. I only had a low end Pioneer amp running small Wharfedale bookshelf speakers and the music/movie experience wasn't too bad but obviously didn;t contain any of the new age digital inclusions. I'm relying on the wall runs to be sufficient but I'm also willing to test a separate floor cable run to the same speakers to see if theres any difference also. With so many brands, sizes, qualities of cable out there all posing to be the best you can get, can anyone see through the marketting crap and actually know what is good and what is crap? I don;t want to make cables sound like they're simply a feed of copper wires in a pvc shield, or is that simply all they are all being jazzed up to be something different from the rest? Ideally I would like a high quality cable at a reasonable price without havig to spend $100's on a brand of cable if its not necessary. I'd probably include some decent banana plugs to make it look tidy and easy to plug in and the only ones I've seen were a pair on the back of a speaker at Selby which were labelled Monster and had a very nice construction to them with swivel ends which were gold with black plastic casing but they don;t actually sell them, they were just on show. Anyway, sorry to bore you all with a mundane question and I'm also sorry if this topic has already been posted because I did do a search but didn;t actually come across any of the topics which I thought sounded similar. Thanks guys!

It's probably more appropriate to post this thread in the Home Theatre subforum where this sort of thing gets asked a fair bit. Maybe ask the mods to move it

Speaker Cable!, New question...
Selecting Speaker Cable Size For H.t. Room.
Speaker Cable, stange question
Speaker Cables, Opinions needed


...you get the jist

If you already have the best cable possible, then why think you need something different. Analogue is analogue, our ears are our ears, and speakers haven't changed much at all. Question:So how is a cable between the amp and speakers going to suddenly improve anything for any kind of back-end pre-amplifier digital signals? Answer: It won't.

Btw, you can run mains flex as speaker wire and a double blind test will not be able to pick it either... I won't mention the few double blind tests done with coathangers as speaker wire either... that tends to get into heated massdebate.

Cheers

Guys, thanks for your feedback. I knew there would of been a million posts abotu cables on this site so the ones you pointed me too gave me plenty to read. Because I don;t know enough about the subject, I just feel I'm getting caught up in the hype of having to buy the best cables to get the best out of my devices. I come from an IT backround so I can only compare it with data transmission and theres plenty of options there too when it comes to quality cables or not with good sheilding. I'm even considering giving CATe a go but I'm not sure how the twisted pairs would rate but I'm pretty sure a good solid core cable wouldnt be far off the quality. Anyway, theres plenty to choose from and I'm not getting caught up in the hype too much and getting carried away with ridiculous prices and flushing my cash down the drain. I can buy a quality 14 gauge OFC cable of 100m for around $90 and I wont be spending much more than that, I just would like to hear other peoples pov. How would audio transmission rate on a twisted pair CAT5 cable do you reckon?

Are you talking about speaker cable? Why would you want to run anything other than what you have already?

That has got to be one of the hardest posts to read that I have ever come across.

Have you ever heard of paragraphs?

Have you searched on the keyword 'cables' on this forum.

What exactly is the question?

Lyle, If you can't read plain english, scroll on, looks pretty plain and simple to me and a few others. Thanks for your advice and comments anyway.

Tony, I'm needing new cable due to repositioning the avr so the current cables are too short and I'm out of the same cable. I'll read on from other posts and see what the go is. Cheers!

You are welcome.

Honestly Gazman, I found your blurb awfully difficult to read also. As such, I skimmed it only and decided you want speaker cables. Speaker cables are analogue, so why you are talking about running CAT5 is beyond me. CAT5 is designed for carrying digital signals between digital devices. You need cables designed for carrying potentially high currents (well, compared to CAT5 anyway, due to the speaker impedances being 4 to 8ohms and, say, 100W of power. P=I^2xR so I=square root of P/R=potentially 5amps (not really, 100W sustained into typical speakers is rarely going to happen without melting voice coils, amp driver transistor/chips etc).

So just get some thicker than string cable, OFC to avoid it getting corrosion on the copper over time, and you will not be able to tell the difference anyway between a coat hanger and $200 speaker cable.

If you were talking about digital cabling, or video cabling, or antenna cabling, then this is completely different. These types of cables need to be able to carry high frequencies (compared to speaker cable LOL) and so shielding, length, impedance and type are much more critical for the application. As I said, you will find plenty of sites trying to flog you thousands of dollars worth of speaker cable, and plenty more sites debunking the whole "it makes a difference" with double blind tests comparing monster cable with a coat hanger.

As long as the cable is sufficient in cross sectional area to carry the currents required by your speakers, this is more than enough for a cable that is not even going to be need to carry more than 20-40kHz (Digital cabling needs to carry MegaHz or even GigaHz). I have decided to say 40kHz as some idiot purist is going to get on here and say that even though our ears can't hear more than about 15kHz, the higher frequencies help the ambience or some such garbage like that..

Jaycar sells good rolls of the stuff at a good price. You can even buy their sexy gold banana plugs if you want, although at the price ($7 each I think) and number of speakers required (I have a 7.1 setup at home with banana terminations on both amp and speakers... equals 7speakers x pair x 2ends x $7=a lot of money), the considerably cheaper non-gold solder type banana plugs were more than sufficient for the job.

Speakers and cables haven't changed for years and years, so why you would think digital is going to need something better for speaker cables is beyond me?

G'day Tony,

I thought I wrote as clearly as possibly, being my first thread, to get my point across but obviously after hearing it from 2 of ya now then maybe I'll keep that in mind for future questions. I ended up buying a reasonably high quality cable at a very good price from someone off ebay and I was able to pickup locally, have a look at it before handing over the cash, and I was very happy with the product. He also sold 24k banana plugs also and only sold em at $2ea so I was pretty impressed on quality and price, just what I was looking for actually. I definately recommend him, lookup the name Bora, not Borat, lol and have a look at his online ebay shop. Wide variety of products, including some bizarre ones. He doesn;t advertise the gold banana plugs on there but he does stock em. Anyway, I'm ending this feed now, thanks to everyone for posting and reading over my poorly created thread. Like I said, it was my first and I did state an apology in advance

Just break up the sentences (no more than 2 commas to a sentence) and use paragraphs.

Bullet points are always easier to read than long never ending paragraphs.
Stating the background and then the questions separately is a great start.

Can you imagine picking up a newspaper and reading an article where the whole page had no breaks in it.

None of us here are without fault. Heck I make spelling and grammatical errors all the time. And I get dumped on at times.

So don't take offence where none was given.

I just had trouble understanding what the question really was.
I like to help people but if it gets too hard to read, I give up.

End rant. I will shut up now.

Compare the above to this:

Just break up the sentences (no more than 2 commas to a sentence) and use paragraphs.Bullet points are always easier to read than long never ending paragraphs.Stating the background and then the questions separately is a great start.Can you imagine picking up a newspaper and reading an article where the whole page had no breaks in it.None of us here are without fault. Heck I make spelling and grammatical errors all the time.And I get dumped on at times.So don't take offence where none was given.I just had trouble understanding what the question really was.I like to help people but if it gets too hard to read, I give up.End rant.I will shut up now.

Lyle,
No problem mate, and no offence was taken, I'm just being my stubborn self. In your analogy though, I actually read the paper from front to back daily and that is how it is written, with obvious commas and full stops ofcourse. I do understand what your saying but I don't think its me, its just people having lazy eye and short concentration spans. Thanks anyway champ.

Yes probably. I have no argument with that.

I had an English Professor (uni) once that would fail us if we left a blank line at the top of a page when writing an essay.

Now THAT is being pedantic don't you reckon.

As Tony said, depending on how you present the information you'll get much better responses from a wider group of people if the information is easier to absorb.

I agree newspapers are written pretty much like you have here although with the significant difference that columns are only a few inches wide (not full screen) which is much less taxing on the eye. Newspapers are also somewhat "story" based so its easier just to absorb the gist rather then try extract all critical info.

And that's what forum readers have to try do (extract out the critical points). General background is of course handy, esp as posters quite often don't know what is important and what isn't. But from the readers point of view some concise points on say model numbers, the specific issue and what needs to be resolved can be a lot easier than trying to work it all out ourselves.

As you said, no offence intended, just trying to explain what might be a more productive posting approach. Posting effectively is a knack, and its not just the same as writing a letter. (And using the odd emoticon is always a good idea)

Regards

Peter Gillespie

Question mark!

Regards

Peter Gillespie

Nah, it was rhetorical.