Harold and Susan Vordos wrote:
I'm no EE, but I can't help but feel that the monster cable craze is
*somewhat* over rated.

I am an EE (well, technically I am, but I've never practiced it) and
I've never understood this craze with speaker wire size. There are only
a couple of fundamental parameters that apply: resistance, capacitance,
and inductance.

Resistance: if you deliver 100 watts (an enormance amount) to an 8 ohm
speaker, 3.5 amps will flow. Wire resistance has 2 effects: heating and
voltage drop. In 16 ga wire, the current density will be about
1ma/circ-mill. I.e., heating will be minimal. 200 feet of 16 ga wire
(100 feet each way) has a resistance of .8 ohms. Carrying 3.5 amps the
wire will have a voltage drop of 2.8 v. Putting it another way, the
wire will consume 10 watts (10%). I'm not sure how this is relevant
since voltage/power drop is just compensated for by cranking up the
volume. So 16 ga wire should more than meet the resistance requirement.

I wouldn't think that the capacitance and inductance of the wire could
be anything but negligible. And I can't see how the wire size would
have a significant effect on them even if they aren't negligible.

There is another consideration: that of the wire acting as an antenna.
This wouldn't effect the loudspeaker, but could feedback to the
amplifier. Again, I would think that wire size would not be a
consideration for this effect.

I fully intend to run stranded 10 gage THHN wires to my speaker locations ...

Use 14 ga: it will be a lot cheaper, it will be a lot easier, and it
will be way more that necessary.

But don't take my word for it - I'm sure that this has been debated
endlessly on the "hi-fi" NG's - Google is your friend.

Bob