Bob Engelhardt wrote:

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 would go for #14 or even #12 on a very long run. 0.8 ohms will have
no serious effect except for two considerations: An 8ohm speaker will
have resonances giving rise to frequencies where the impedance is
considerably less. Speaker damping depends, to some extent, on the
source impedance driving it. It would probably be advantageous to keep
it down to about 0.1 ohm.

For long runs, like from house to shop, it would be much better to run
shielded wire carrying line level (~0.1 to 1 volt) signals to an amp in
the shop. That amp doesn't need to be all that fancy to give pleasant
listening over the sound of a running lathe. :-) 'course, if you build
your own, ...

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.

Right. 30KHz has a wavelength of about 100m (~300') and a propogation
delay of the order of 100nsec in 100'. It ain't going to effect any
audio signal even at frequencies only your dog can hear.

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.

Forget it!! There is more BS in the field of audio than any other -
even car sales! Unless you have the math, physics and electronics to
adequately check out every post you'll do nothing but get confused.
And, typically, the more serious the "audiophile", the more used hay
you'll get.

Ted