"Leo Lichtman" wrote in message
...

wrote: (clip)Do it!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I agree. Monster cables are a marketing rip-off. I heard a talk by an
audio engineer in which this was thoroughly analyzed. The main benefit of
those very large cables is in the profit margin. Then there is the
placebo
effect, which can seem very real to a believer.


I used to know a self-styled "audio expert" who once showed me an article
in which five amplifiers were evaluated by an engineer. Four of them were
in
the $2000 to $5000 range. The fifth was a popular unit which sold for about
$250. His rather extensive testing rated the $250 unit right in the middle
of
the pack. My erstwhile buddy used this to argue that the testing was
invalid
and that the engineer didn't know anything about what he was doing.

He then went on to claim that engineers and musicians tended to own the
worst
sounding systems....

On the other hand, one of the finest sounding systems I'd ever heard was in
a little recording studio. This was many years ago, long before CD's, etc.
The
record player was a transcription player with a 35 lb turntable (lots of
metal
content...). The speakers were a gargantuan pair of Altec Lansing Voice of
the
Theatres. And the amplifier was a $69.95 DynaKit... And, as I recall, the
speaker wires were lamp cord...

Personally, and I'm an engineer by trade, tend to suggest landscape lighting
wire
in higher powered systems or for long runs, although lamp cord works just
fine
for lower power/short runs. Lamp cord is typically AWG 16 or AWG 18.
Landscape lighting wire looks like lamp cord, but comes in AWG 12 and
AWG 14. And it is highly flexible and abrasion-resistant.

But, if you are going to plant it in the walls where it won't be flexed,
your
plain old power wire (Romex, whatever...) will work just fine. The problem
is what to use where you come out of the wall. I'd run the wire between a
couple boxes and put on a blank outlet plate in which I'd installed a couple
pairs of banana jacks. Then use lamp cord for the short runs between the
amplifier and jacks and the speakers and jacks. Or you can use a couple
1/4 in. phone jacks (you can get right angle phone plugs that won't protrude
more than about 1/4 in. from the wall...)

One thing NOT to do is to use the ground wire as a "common" and the
white and black wires as the "hot" speaker wires. You WILL get some
crosstalk between the two channels. But, if you have some, say, 14/3 with
ground, you can, say, use the black and white for one channel and the
red and ground (bare) for the other. For the same reason, use a plastic
outlet plate, not a metal one, to keep the two channels separate, should
you elect to use phone jacks.

Jerry