LoVetri Acoustics

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Speaker Wire

 

What type of speaker wire should I use?

 

More and more often today an emphasis is being placed, by sales people, on the need to spend increasing amounts of money on expensive esoteric high tech speaker cables.  This simply is not the case.

 

The most important factor in judging a speaker wire’s performance in your system is the cables resistance.  Basically the cables resistance is determined by the length and the thickness of the cable.  The shorter and fatter the cable the less the resistance and as the cable gets longer and / or thinner the resistance increases.

 

A basic rule to use is the longer the run between the amplifier and speakers the heavier or smaller numbered wire gage (AWG) cable you should use.

 

Here is a list of maximum distances you should consider for a given wire thickness when wiring a LoVetri Acoustics CR2 speaker:

 

22 AWG.........less than 3 meters or 10 feet

20 AWG.........less than 4.5 meters or 15 feet

18 AWG.........less than 7.5 meters or 24 feet

16 AWG.........less than 11 meters or 36 feet

 

In the case of 15 meters (50 feet) or more other factors start to come into effect.  Feel free to contact us if extremely large distances are needed and we will be happy to offer some possible solutions.

 

There are many high quality wires available today.  A lot of what the wire manufacturing companies marketing departments will tell you is just gimmick and you won’t hear any difference when using their expensive, often times in the thousands of dollars, speaker cable.  This has been proven time and again at LoVetri Acoustics, through objective scientific testing, and a belief that if you can hear it you can measure it.   They will exploit words like warmth, detail, definition, speed and brilliance to describe their cable’s performance.  These characteristics are difficult if not impossible to measure.  It would however be cool if their equipment had a setting for measuring a speaker cable’s “sweetness”.

 

Oxygen free copper wire and Silver wire can have a lower resistance than ordinary copper wire.  This means that a thinner wire can cover a larger distance but they are often a great deal more expensive.

 

The fact is that much of what people hear when auditioning expensive speaker cables is physiological; what they are told they are hearing and the general appearance of the cables themselves.  It is on the other hand un-doubtable that your friends will be impressed with fire hose sized cables coming from the back of your speakers and that can be good also...

 

Some useful tips when setting up your speakers are to keep the speaker wires as short as possible and the same length to both speakers.  Don’t coil up excess cable as this could create inductance causing high frequencies to be lost.  If you do have extra cable on one side, which is inevitable to happen, it would be better to lay it randomly on the floor.  Also, rather than trying to fit bare wire into speaker connectors, speaker cables should be properly terminated.  High quality banana plugs or spade connectors will ensure your cable retains its performance over time by protecting the bare wire from elements which could lead to corrosion.

 

LoVetri Acoustics Hi-fi loudspeakers, stereo high end audio, surround sound system and home cinema speakers, studio monitors, floorstanders, bookshelf, and subwoofers.

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