On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 01:21:06 -0800, "Harold and Susan Vordos"
wrote:
"habbi" wrote in message
...

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.

Don't use solid wire for speaker audio. Most of the higher
frequency current in audio travels through 'skin effect' on the outer
layer of the copper, and fine stranded wire is a bit lower resistance
at high audio frequencies. Plus, you are going to be moving and
flexing it a lot at the ends, and solid wire breaks when this happens.

12-2 SPT-2 stranded "Malibu Light" wire. Big zip-cord. Inexpensive
and works well in that application, and comes polarized so you can
keep all your speakers in phase. You want to avoid the nasty
listening effects in the room when one speaker is out of phase with
the others - dead spots like the "Cone Of Silence"... ;-)

I'm no EE, but I can't help but feel that the monster cable craze is
*somewhat* over rated. I fully intend to run stranded 10 gage THHN wires
to my speaker locations in the new house I'm building, and out to the shop,
underground, in conduit.

If you're going more than 50'-100' or so with the signal (like "out
to the shop") use a 70-volt amplifier system to do it, and drop it
back to 8-ohm at the far end with a speaker transformer. Otherwise
you get a distorted signal trying to push 8-ohm audio too far, from
the capacitive/inductive effects of the cable. That's why they have
to apply loading coils every ~6,000' on long telephone cables.

-- Bruce --
--
Bruce L. Bergman, Woodland Hills (Los Angeles) CA - Desktop
Electrician for Westend Electric - CA726700
5737 Kanan Rd. #359, Agoura CA 91301 (818) 889-9545
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