What is a cable's gauge ???

[Dogbert]

HI,

When I go to buy speaker cables, I can choose between 2.5mm or 4mm (non branded top end in the store).

How do I know what gauge they are (since in all the sites cables are measured in gauges) ???

[Jammrock]

A cable's gauge is the thickness of the cable. See cking's conversion chart. The strange thing about gauge is that the lower the gauge, the thicker the cable. Go figure.

As for speaker cable theory...one of the philosophies is that a single, high gauge (meaning a lower gauge number...correct me if I'm wrong) copper/silver/hybrid wire will give a more pure, nuetral signal. The higher end cables will use 2+, 10-16 AWG wires. Each wire will be individually shielded, usually with teflon. This reduces the amount of cross talk and EMI/RF interference in the signal.

The other uses mass amounts of small strands of copper, like common speaker wire you buy at Radio Shack, Best Buy and the like. The very high end of this type use very high grade, oxygen free copper, that is well shielded to produce a high end sound. Most, if not all, audiophiles will tell you that those kinds of cable don't cut it for high end audiophile systems, because the signal gets too colored. But that's a different debate that I don't have much experience in.

Speaker cable that I have seen recommended, and have reasonable prices:

Audio Quest - What I and several others use.
Transparent Cables - KvH likes these quite a bit.
Purist Audio Design - ALBPM uses these.
LAT International - Okay, so I don't know of anyone who uses these, but they are at a great price, they get rave reviews and their web site is always a fun read if you're big into audio.
Greebe Home Built Silver Wonders - They're so good and sound so pure that no one in the world can afford them but Greebe, who made them himself Wish I could build cables that good...

Jammrock

[xortam]

Some cables are multi-gauge and twisted at various rates. Some folks consider the thick solid core cables as best for low frequencies. Cables are like religion ... everyone has different beliefs and you've got zealots, agnostics, and atheists. Hey, if you want to go cheap you can always run Romex.

[Gurm]

And if you REALLY want to be extra-special, you could get time-compensated speaker cable!

See, the bass travels slower than the treble. And the treble travels on the outside. So the outside is wrapped, but the center is straight.

Yeah, that's the ticket!

- Gurm

[xortam]

Sounds like my Monster M1 cables to me Gurm. They're 13 years old now and I still love the sound of my system. A lot of tricky stuff has come out since then but I bought what was right at the time and I don't see any reason to discard my investment. A lot of this stuff at the ultra high end is so subtle that people would be so much better off by improving their room acoustics. Add another person in the room or set a glass vase on the table and you probably have more of an effect then some of these esoteric components.

[Dogbert]

Thanks a lot guys,

Cking, I looked over google but didn't find this chart, thanks !

Anyway, I'm on budget so I think about getting radioshack cables (2.5mm) for biwiring.

Another question (and please, I need a budget answer, not audiophile answer):

My setup is as follow (all speakers are Wharfedale Modus Music):

Yamaha amp 85W x 5

2x 170W - 3m (about 10ft) 2.5mm cables (biwired)
1x center (120W) - 3m 4mm cable (single wire)

2x150W which need around 13m (43 ft ?) of cable.

No, the room isn't THAT big, I just don't have a carpet so I have to be a little creative about passing the cable from one side of the room to the other.

Is 2.5mm enough (with biwire) or should I spend (quite more) on 4mm cable ? How critical is the distance ?

[VJ]

Is 2.5mm enough (with biwire) or should I spend (quite more) on 4mm cable ?

Are you talking of bi-wiring (one amp/channel) or bi-amping (2 amps/channel) ?

In both cases, the net-result is that the crossover in the speaker is bridged, resulting in the fact that high tones will be sent to the woofer and low tones to the midrange and tweeter. (most speakers only allow the elimination of the crossover between woofer and midrange, the midrange and tweeter are thus considered to be one unit, this crossover cannot be disabled by bi-wiring or amping)

From what I heard, the decission between single wire or bi-wiring (or bi-amping) depends on the content to be played (classical, rock, movie, ...), the rooms accoustics and personal taste.


Jörg

(my Quadral Argent 70 are single wired to my Onkyo Integra 9711, but simply because I didn't have enough cable to bi-wire)

[RichL]

I've yet to have anyone fully convince me that buying £50 a meter super-cables will make my system sound any better than 50p a meter cable. The only sound (no pun intended) and logical statement I can apply to speaker cable is that a larger diameter conductor will have less impedance.

People talk about inductance, capacitance and the skin effect, but these sort of things dont start to come into play until the MHz ranges, audio systems work in 20Hz-20KHz, plus a bit for harmonics either way.

My current system sounds good, and my cables cost me 24p a meter. They're 240v 20A solid core twin and earth mains cable. More than sufficient for a 30w RMS amplifier.

[Dogbert]

Vj,

I'm biwiring (1 amp , 2 wires/channel), my speakers have double connectors for biwiring.
My mains are biwired (2x2.5mm) and there is a big difference in the sound.

[Dogbert]

Cking,

It seems AWG isn't the same as SWG...

American Wire Gauge

American Wire Gauge (AWG) is a U.S. standard set of non-ferrous wire conductor sizes. The "gauge" means the diameter. Non-ferrous includes copper and also aluminum and other materials, but is most frequently applied to copper household electrical wiring and telephone wiring. Typical household wiring is AWG number 12 or 14. Telephone wire is usually 22, 24, or 26. The higher the gauge number, the smaller the diameter and the thinner the wire. Since thicker wire carries more current because it has less electrical resistance over a given length, thicker wire is better for longer distances. For this reason, where extended distance is critical, a company installing a network might prefer telephone wire with the lower-gauge, thicker wire of AWG 24 to AWG 26.
AWG is sometimes known as Brown and Sharpe (B&S) Wire Gauge.

Thanks to your help, look what I've found though:

Gauge calculator: http://www.mogami.com/e/cad/wire-gauge.html

and some more gague tables:

http://www.coilcraft.com/awg.cfm

http://www.reade.com/Conversion/wire_gauge.html

[VJ]

I'm biwiring (1 amp , 2 wires/channel), my speakers have double connectors for biwiring.
My mains are biwired (2x2.5mm) and there is a big difference in the sound.

Yes, I can imagine there is quite a difference, but the answer to which is better is highly dependant on the room, and content (I really shoud try biwiring mine... ).

However, if your other speakers are already biwired (and sound better like that), it seems logical to also biwire the rear set (match every component as close as possible).
I hadn't considered that you were using it for home-cinema, mine is just a music setup. As to which cable is best, the answer would probably be the 4 mm, but whether the difference is audible is an entirely different question (which makes it hard so say if the price-difference is justifiable...).


Jörg

[Dogbert]

Me again,

Could you please comment on this site:

http://www.pcavtech.com/techtalk/wire_size/

According to their calculation scheme:
8 Ohm speakers and 44ft of cable means:

44ft x200 = 8800

6 (75% of 8ohm) / 8800 = 0.00068

This means I need an 8 gauge wire ?!

[ALBPM]

Hi Gang,

As far as Bi-wiring goes I did not bi-wire my rear speakers because they don't have sub woofers in them. To me it makes a difference on speakers that have the full compliment of a tweeter, mid-range and a sub-woofer in them. The Bi-wiring make the biggest difference in extending the low range. So, I did it for my fronts and center channel which have the full compliment of drivers. I did try it on my rears which only have a tweeter and mid-range drivers and could not hear enough of a difference to bother bi-wiring the long run of cable. (I had to run the cable around the base board of my living room)

Paul

[spoogenet]

Originally posted by RichL
I've yet to have anyone fully convince me that buying £50 a meter super-cables will make my system sound any better than 50p a meter cable. The only sound (no pun intended) and logical statement I can apply to speaker cable is that a larger diameter conductor will have less impedance.

Changing cables certainly CAN make a notable difference, but I wouldn't say that it always will. If you're using some crap $15 Radio Shack speakers, paying a pile for cables probably won't make a difference for you. However, if you are using professional studio monitors, having good cables certainly will make a difference for you.

When my bro changed his DVD setup to component/optical/higher quality audio cables....there was a notable difference (for the better) in both the audio and video as compared to the s-video/non-optical/regular audio cables setup that he had previously.

Think of it this way. You won't get much of a performance gain using 92 vs 87 octane fuel in your Ford Escort....but you certainly will notice a difference in your Twin Turbo Supra.

People talk about inductance, capacitance and the skin effect, but these sort of things dont start to come into play until the MHz ranges, audio systems work in 20Hz-20KHz, plus a bit for harmonics either way.

Does anybody tune their wires for impedance matching to reduce voltage reflections???

If my calculations are correct, which they probably aren't, the skin depth for round copper wire at 20kHz would be .0184 inches. Or I could be totally wrong.

b

[Jammrock]

My B&W 9NT's are bi-wired. Compared to how they sounded in the shop, it makes a world of difference. Especially when listening to the Fianle for The Firebird suite. Those bass drum hits are spectacular! They are crisp and clear and shake the entire room.

The gauge of the cable is not the only factor when running long wires long distances. Most manufactures have cable specially designed for long runs. They are made to drasticaly reduce EMI on long runs and shield them so they don't turn into an RF antenna. In-wall, super-flat or long run cables are the common names. Here are some links:

http://www.latinternational.com/index.php3/page-20110/prod-52.html

http://www.audioquest.com/charts/chart10.html (F-40 and F-14)

http://www.monstercables.com/home_av/speaker_cable2.html#superflatmini

Jammrock