I am building a new house and I want to hardwire it for speakers. Is there
any reason not to use plain solid strand 14/2 NMD 90 wire. I have this wire
on hand and it is half the cost of speaker wire.



Be aware that any length of wire in excess of about 15 feet can act as
an antenna and bring unwanted signals down the line to the amp where it
can get amplified and sent back up the wire and through the speakers.

I used to run a College sound recording studio and a CCTV studio and had
major problems at one stage from the local radio station signal getting
into the system through the long mic leads (we were in 'line of sight'
with their powerful transmitter tower). The problem was eventually
traced back to a single mic lead with a 'ground fault'.

I am also a radio ham and at one time lived in an apartment building and
never caused any interference problems until the 'super' came home one
day with a new 'surround sound' system and I was blasting right through
it whenever I transmitted! The problem was nothing to do with my set up
(I hadn't changed anything) but rather it was his very long runs of
cheap speaker wire picking up my signal and feeding it back through the
very poor filtering on his 'cheapo' amp. The solution in this case was
to fit ferrite rings/loops at either end of his speaker leads and he
never heard me again.

If you are going to run long speaker leads it may pay you to invest in a
few ferrite rings/loops and save yourself a lot of headaches down the
road. They are readily available from the likes of Radio Shack at
reasonable prices.

--
Larry Green