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Good and cheap speaker cable

Those cables you've got are fine and as good as 16 gauge lamp cord or extension cords. Should you decide to change them, to make it worth your while I recomend Blue Jeans Cables. They aren't likely going to turn your stereo into a giant killer, but for a reasonable price you get Fully Assembled High Quality cables the Correct Length with the Proper Connecters Permanantly Fastened that may last a lifetime. Thats all I want from my speaker cables. Or Interlink Cables for that matter.
 
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Hey all, I just received the parts in the mail and made my cables. I have to say, I quite like them! It may be a placebo, but I'm picking out some pretty major differences in the sound (more punchy bass, more detail in the highs, and overall faster). It may be a combination of the biwiring and the better cable. The cable itself seems to be much higher quality than my old cable, each individual copper strand is much much thicker. It's a bit unruly, but I'd expect that with thicker cable.

So far, it's a whole lotta cable for just $25 in materials.

Thanks to everyone who commented, this is exactly what I wanted! I also have a foot and a half left, so I may make an interconnect soon. :D

Here's a pic of the finished product!
fdjGyl.jpg



And here's a pic of the setup!
W8Zg2l.jpg
 
The only speaker cable I will not have anything to do with is Monster Cable. Not because of their wire and interconnects but because of their business practices. But trying to put competitors out of business through legal thuggery.
 
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Nice job on the cables. Really.

Those are sweet little B&W speakers and I'm not surprised your quality cables are pleasing to your ear.

Ken
 
62sunbeam said:
Low voltage lighting wire for outdoor lighting.

It's excellent and very cheap.

50 feet of 14 gauge LV wires at Lowes will set you back well below your budget.

Good luck

Eric
Click to expand...

BEWARE and be carefull here...

Some of these cables, depending on the rest of your system could be a problem.

I am not critisizing any wire specifically but my experience was that we in our office had access to the 'best' low voltave wire for interior low voltage lighting systems back in 1990 era - you know, the ones with two strands of wire with the lamp fixture set between... - this wire was only made in Germany and each sub-strand silver coated/plated. I was running Rogers LS3.5a's through a pair of Albarry power amps (esoteric brit amps - verry nice) Both amps shorted their power outputs sending DC to the speakers demo-ing both woofers and one tweeter. Disaster.

I set the amps back to Albarry - they called me and - no **** - asked me if I was running the amps to drive speakers through some 'wierd home made wire set like that low voltage stuff' - I freaked - said "no way' and immediately shut my curtains! Anyhow, it cost me a lot to fix, and I must say the Allbary stuff was good, still have some of it, but I tossed the wire that very day and have never had a problem since.

Some amps without safety breakers and some speakers that may be challenging to drive need wire that does not add or mess with capacitance. So if you are working with expensive parts that have no protection circuits be carfull with strange wire!

Just my story - but I love to try new DIY stuff!
 
My guess is the low voltage wire may not have had enough insulation resistance and more than likely arced over thusfore causing your problem.
 
It's odd how timing can be an amazing thing. I had just about given up trying to tweak my Infinity RSIIIb's in my room when it occurred to me I had a bunch of Dayton 14ga. copper cable from adding some other smaller speakers. I had been using Kimber 8VS for the longest time and thought they were doing a very good job. Especially compared to the many other brands I had tried. On a whim yesterday I switched them out with that Dayton cable and what a surprise it was! Everything's set flat and It's like hearing them again for the first time. For much longer than I want to admit I drank the Monster Kool aid and once I wised up and began trying different things like the Dayton it's been an eye opener.

You did a great job on those Moonshine's! Enjoy!
 
I remember the original add copy for Monster Cable. It was as if Noel Lee had returned from a pilgrimage to Xanadu where he learned directly from Saraswati the Hindu Goddess of Music and Art all of the secrets of speaker, and interconnects. He them, for a price, enlightened all of us with the wisdom of Saraswati.

Om Aim Saraswati Namaha,

Chant the above mantra 500,000 times, one can see Saraswati and will become enlightened. This must be was Noel Lee did.



2282539788_91c4d0e250.jpg


Saraswati
 
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Walmart sells speaker wire in the "Car Audio" section of their stores that is 1/4 the price of and superior to Monster XP.

I needed some long lengths of speaker wire at one time and had a box of Cat5e laying around so gave it a try. Twist the 4 solids together for one polarity and the 4 striped together for the other polarity. The 4 conductors total are similar to an 18 ga. wire. This may not carry enough current for certain systems but this became my standard speaker wire.
 
Tube Radio said:
My guess is the low voltage wire may not have had enough insulation resistance and more than likely arced over thusfore causing your problem.
Click to expand...

Exacly what I first thought - but each cable length was in one layer of heatshink and one layer of fiberglass sheath, and two of these constituted a run, connected to a 25 watt amp. I would be surprised if that was not adeqate. The amp maker told me that the problem was something to do with reactive capacitance in some cable compositions when driving heavy load speakers with these amps which had nothing to protect the ouput stage.

I don't know maybe he was was haveing some fun with me... if I knew it was something straight forward like insulation I would be happily making some of those massive cat5/telco trunk line bundles to this day.

For people experimenting and fearless, keep in mind you local metal reclaimation yard, the one near me has 5 to 20 big steel bins full of old cable at any one time. X-office cat5, old stock spools, heavy welding feed cable, all sorts of fun stuff - if they let you polk around they will probably sell it to you for pennies a pound. I have picked up many sets of balanced cables with really nice connectors, along with other goodies at my local.
 
Cat-5 and Cat-6 network cable makes excellent speaker wire. Where I work they are installing new network cables all of the time if you ask the installation crews will often just give you spool ends, 15, 20 or so feet which is too sort to use when you are talking cable runs of a couple of 100 feet or more.

I am suprised that some of the more advanturous souls don't use any of the numerous types of coaxial cable for their speakers.. I can just see some Higher order of Audiophile using Belden 7/8" hard line for speaker cable. He feeds his Cost-A-Mint M432 loud speakers, from a pair of Loota Moola Mono amps. Using the 7/8" hard line it would look like a he has water lines running to his Cost-A-Mint speakers. If this person stripped the outer insulation off and polished the solid copper outer shield it would actually look pretty darn good.

http://www.ke3jp.com/main/img_1167014081_14914_1167091191_mod_330_118.jpg
 
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transmaster said:
Cat-5 and Cat-6 network cable makes excellent speaker wire. Where I work they are installing new network cables all of the time if you ask the installation crews will often just give you spool ends, 15, 20 or so feet which is too sort to use when you are talking cable runs of a couple of 100 feet or more.

I am suprised that some of the more advanturous souls don't use any of the numerous types of coaxial cable for their speakers.. I can just see some Higher order of Audiophile using Belden 7/8" hard line for speaker cable. He feeds his Cost-A-Mint M432 loud speakers, from a pair of Loota Moola Mono amps. Using the 7/8" hard line it would look like a he has water lines running to his Cost-A-Mint speakers. If this person stripped the outer insulation off and polished the solid copper outer shield it would actually look pretty darn good.

http://www.ke3jp.com/main/img_1167014081_14914_1167091191_mod_330_118.jpg
Click to expand...
Bit of a chip on the shoulder?:thumbsdn:
 
:thmbsp: Please take this in good spirit:

My all time favorite cable debate was when James Randi just flushed Pear cables reputation calling them out for a double blind test with their Anjou 7000$ cables vs 80$ Monster Cables. Michael Fermer from Sterophile got his booty trashed in this as well. And it all started with this article:

http://gizmodo.com/302478/7250-speaker-cables-turn-you-into-a-dancin-fool

*********************Article excerpt**********************

If you thought Monster Cable was bad with its $80 HDMI cables, check out these Pear Anjou Speaker Cables, ringing up the cash register at an astonishing $7,250 for a couple of 12-footers. The most entertaining aspect of this sucker bait is the way the company got some gullible snob to gush about how he thinks he can actually hear a difference between these and the other presumably high-end wiring he's auditioned:

"... way better than anything I have heard...Simply put these are very danceable cables. Music playing through them results in the proverbial foot-tapping scene with the need or desire to get up and move. Great swing and pace—these cables smack that right on the nose big time." (Dave Clark - Positive Feedback Online)

Bullshit. Total bullshit. Danceable? Dance, fool, dance.

****************************************************

:lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao: :boink: lamp cord FTW
 
Speaker cable just needs to be thick, and have good insulation for up to 50 volts maybe. Any decent amp will put out large peaks of current. Indeed, the little NAD 3020 was tested back in the day putting out peaks of +-20 amps. I just wish I could find a copy of that review because people don't believe me.

Any thick wire with reasonable insulation will work. Household electrical cable (the solid core type) is excellent for the money, if you can put up with it not being very flexible. Decent extension cords, with 16 or 14 gauge wire, with their ends cut off will work. Most car accessory shops sell 16, 14 or even 12 gauge wire, that works well too.

I would personally stay away from cat 5 cable, it doesn't really have enough current carrying capacity. I would also stay away from co-axial cable, as I've heard it can cause problems with some amplifiers. I think there used to be a cable called "Litz" or something like that, it was woven flat to go underneath carpet, but it caused problems with some amps.

Lee.
 
I recently bought some canare bi-wire cable for my wharfdales from bluejeancable.com and I am very impressed with the cable and the sound coming from my speakers
 
Made my own speaker cables, just for a project.

Got 50 feet of single conductor, 12 gage, fine stranded, silver coated, teflon insulated wire really cheap from ePay. Cut into four lengths, made two twisted pairs using an electric drill, then covered in some woven cable wrap. Added color-coded shrink wrap and connectors and I'm done.

Can't say I hear any difference through my Theil 3.6s but certainly no decrements that I can discern.

Looks kinda snazzy too and I can brag on my rocket scientist skillz.
 
Just picked up the Switchcraft RCA connectors detailed in the 6 moons directions, I'll be making a pair of interconnects when they arrive!
 
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