Speaker cable - what do you use?

[unrealrocks]

Something I've often had long talks to people about, as long as the cable has a low impedance then whats the benifits over 10meters of Mains cable with 4.5ohms resitance (IIRC) or 10meters QED silver with 4.2ohms resistance?

I'm currenty upgrading my HiFi and although I use mains cable with the earth binded to the neutral to act as a semi sheild and live running through the middle. I'm going to buy a few meters of proper stuff to see if you can tell the difference.

Whats your opinion on this?

[BlueBot]

I use some really nice cable that I got from Richer Sounds, the anniversary QED, got it cheap as well, had a sale on a while back.

I'm not really sure if I can tell the difference between speaker cable or not, perhaps decent cable sounds a little "fuller & crisper" than really cheap cable, but IMHO at least I don't think it's amazingly better. I mean I'm not sure that most people can tell the difference between £2 a metre calbe and £5 a metre cable.

Steve

[Aaron]

I use IXOS 6006 cable, mainly because it looks pretty.

[fondie]

i've got QED Silver Anniversary biwire for my front speakers and am just about to install some Cable Talk 3.1 biwire for the rears.

i've never done any thorough testing of speaker cable because it's a pain to set up but i did do a blind test of interconnects ranigng from 50p to over £100 (and though higher price does not necessarily mean better quality) the more expensive cables did make a definite difference.

[Barry]

Gale XL160-2 = cheap at 2.99p a meter and vgood quality

[Rave]

I've got Gale XL315 for my fronts. When I got my surround setup though I bought a load of cheap 79 strand from Maplin to wire it up and I can't tell the difference, it sounds fine.

Rich :¬)

[Howard]

Made my own 4-core cable (8 inner cables per core) out of Cat5 cable for my front speakers (bi-wire) and 2-core (8 inner cables per core) out of Cat5 for the centre channel. One run of Cat5 to the rears, 2 inner cables per polarity per speaker

Wrapped the front cables in Spiral-wrap and it looks quite smart And sounds powerful and "in-your-face" too

[5lab]

its not all about teh impedance - a well made cable will sound nicer cos it sends an even amount of frequencies thru the cable, whereas a mains cable/cat5 might cut out the higher or lower frequencies and thus sound worse

[Howard]

Cat5 cable is known for high quality audio... It's done by lots of people

[unrealrocks]

Cat5 cable is known for high quality audio... It's done by lots of people

Yeah - I'd heard about this, even proffesionals say its a good trick. I've just ordered a few reels of CAT5 to rewire the house so I'm going to borrow a few lengths and try that as well!

[Jiff Lemon]

I used to beleive that expensive cable was simply a rip off. Cable is cable, surely?
Then my friend (who used to work in Audio at the Beeb, No self employed) got me to change just one side of the stereo. I was gobsmacked at the difference.

I still can't justify £90 on a pair of interconnects, but I do now buy decent stuff - Basically the best advice I can give is try before you buy. My hearing can't tell the difference between £30 and £90 interconnects, but it sure as hell can tell the difference between the £30 and 99p ones!

[Rave]

A friend of mine made me do a blind test between an interconnect that came with my CD player and a £30 one. I couldn't tell the difference, if anything I preferred the cheap one. I wouldn't wire my speakers up with any old wire, but nowadays I wouldn't spend more than 2% of the cost of the speakers on cable. I fact, as far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't spend much money on any part of your system until you've got a seriously kickass pair of speakers. My friend had a pair of World Audio Designs KLS3s, and we hooked them up to my £140 Sherwood surround amp when I first bought it (1997). They still sounded incredible, way better than my £200 Mordaunt-Shorts ever will. The THD introduced by most amps, even cheap ones, is in the order of .01% or less. The distortion introduced by most speakers is 1% or more. As far as I'm concerned high quality transducers are the only way to good sound, which is why I'm sitting here with a pair of HD600s on my head.

Rich :¬)

[Flibb]

I just use standard biwire OFC from richers on my hifi setup, and picked up a 100m spool of OFC for my AV rig. Agree that speakers are important, I have JPW ML1010 floor standers big but sound ace. 100m of OFC cost me about £20, its exactly the same as the stuff richers sell for £0.80/m, I was told that its all made in same same place and is then branded (doesnt include the really exspensive stuff). I picked up a load of bananna plugs as well so will sort that out soon, connections at the moment arnt the best in the world.
Flibb

[Howard]

Yeah none of my front speaker cables have banana plugs on.
I really ought to buy myself 10 banana plugs and get it done nicely

[Flibb]

You can get them for 80p each from cpc, but they charge an arm and leg for postage. Other option is eaby, some bloke was doing them for £1 and a flat postage charge. CPC also do cable for diy interconnectors and I got my bulk speaker cable from them.

[Zak33]

Im a CAT 5 man a lot of the time.

I honestly believe cable and interconnects are where lots of peeps fall down

But I also agree with Rave who states about 2% of the system value..maybe up to 5% if you have long cable runs needed.

Try is hard before you buy tho...lots of places aint doing it