Hifi speaker cable: what is "good enough"?

Check out Monoprice assuming they ship to the UK. Otherwise, check your local online shops and consider even going up one more to 12 g. I use 14 or 12 for everything. Pure copper., absolutely. I use bare ends or banana plugs. The latter also from Monoprice. Parts Express is another good online supplier of decent speaker wire.

The above said, your German wire sounds like it will do the trick.

I am VERY skeptical of most cables and wires that cost more than $2-5 a foot. Look at Blue Jeans if you want to see quality but reasonably priced interconnects and speaker wire.

Just get the German stuff and banana plugs. You'll be fine.

Avoid all the audiophile smoke and mirrors and go to Home Depot or Lowes and look in the bulk wire ('by the foot' on spools) section. Get some 14-ga 100% copper two-conductor stranded flex.

Gold plated connectors and "oxygen free copper" are pure BS and do nothing to make your music sound better.  It's a scam.

There's another idiotic debate about speaker wire on an audio forum I frequent. People switched their inexpensive speaker wire to high priced speaker cables and the differences were astounding! One guy claimed he'd set up a system for a friend and recommended expensive wire which the guy said no to. Then he goes on to say that the guy says how he'd never been steered wrong by the installer so go ahead. And not 10 minutes after putting in the expensive wire, the guy's wife comes home and immediately goes on about how great the system suddenly sounds.

Yeah, right.

I've ordered 20 metres (65 feet) of copper (being careful to check it's not something else, such as aluminium, coated in copper), German- made cable rated at 12AWG. Cost is only £30. It happens to be listed as oxygen-free (OFC), but this is clearly not bumping the price and no claims are made sound-wise. A bit of quick research of the science suggests that OFC only means there's less oxygen (I'm no chemist, but "oxide" might be more accurate?) rather than none, so conductivity might be very slightly improved.

Did anyone say that??

For many years I thought a huge amount of nonsense was talked about guitars and guitar amps and accessories, including a fair amount of misleading marketing. Having ventured into the hifi world more recently I see that, in comparison, the musical instrument industry is a model of common sense and integrity.

The problem, of course, is that you can't win an argument with an "audiophile": in the end their ears are far better than most humans can comprehend, so they will be able to hear things you can't. Whether this is true or not, it's a manufacturing and marketing dream.

I started this thread trying to determine where the hype takes over in relation to speaker cable. The consensus seems to be that it's quite low in the food chain. This is as far as I've got:

I looked at the advice from the makers of my new speakers. They have what seems like a useful guide to the thickness of cable (in AWG) recommended for different cable lengths and speaker impedances. Then I thought it seemed logical to have cable made of a good conductor, copper, and for it to be reasonably pure and certainly not another metal "copper coated". I decided on banana plugs on the ends, mostly for convenience, but also so binding posts wouldn't need to be checked for tightness. I did choose gold plated terminals, as I've gone for gold pin guitar amp valves/tubes in the past, simply to reduce the options for oxydisation or reactions between different metals. I don't expect to hear any difference (but I would if a connection went bad).

I made up and laid my new cables last night and found the 12AWG reassuringly thick, but still flexible. It's a close fit into the barrels of the banana plugs so should give a good connection. Unfortunately one of the plugs arrived with one binding screw missing so I haven't been able to finish the job and listen to anything yet, but another pack is arriving today...

Thanks for your kind words.

As an EE I can actually tell whether they do need that inductance to perform stably or not (since they do not have a Zobel network) and it’s somewhat hard to find cable that provides that. The other option I found at the time was marginally less expensive.

Another thing is that the amps do sound great, so I just gauged the package for its total price considering it is a functional requirement.



Lastly, I could at any time sell the amps at a price higher than I paid for them.

But no, you must be right, I just got suckered by marketing BS as I’m not as smart as you.

Like, Nikon saying to only their brand flash units on their cameras.  Much BS to it.

I am just glad I've bought well engineered/designed gear that doesn't require any sort of compensation at the back end of it. 

Perhaps it will distract them if I finish the story? I left it at the point where I was about to finish setting up a modest cable upgrade to thicker (12AWG) copper (pretty sure the old stuff was coated and too thin for the length of cable versus speaker impedance) and using banana plugs not bare wire.

I should say at this point I've spent a lot of time recently using a list of tracks that one UK hifi manufacturer recommends for testing speakers. I used them first to decide I needed better speakers, then to admire the wisdom of that decision. So it's a very familiar set of songs and I know how my system handles them.

I started the new cable test while facing the speakers, as you would, using a remote to adjust volume by ear. It took a while to realise I'd settled on a lower volume range (28 on the Marantz amp, max is 60) than before (always 30-32). So, I'm fairly certain I got a thicker signal with the new cable. Secondly, my impression was of a little more bass. That was reinforced as I felt the need to turn down the sub from about 33% to maybe 25%. It had already been reduced thanks to the new speakers.

Whilst there's no science to any of this, I was surprised, as I hadn't expected to notice any change at all. Would I notice more difference if I'd spent a lot more on cable and had a higher spec hifi? Maybe. Am I inclined to try? Not really. Just my honest experience, for what it's worth.

"Your ears may vary."

Cheers Peegoo.