Using twisted wire for speaker cable?

Hi All,

Is there any inherent disadvantage to using a twisted pair of wires to connect home theatre speakers? Most speaker wire seems to be the flat, "zip cord" variety, and I was wondering if there is some reason for that?

John

Reply to
John Morley
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In and of itself, twisted pair does neither harm nor good to the signal. However, most TP cable is 24-gauge, which is too small to carry the kind of power a home theater system normally requires. I usually use 10- or 12-gauge cable for the front left, right and center channel speakers. Surround speakers get

14- or 16-gauge. The sub-woofer, if it's self-powered (most are) uses shielded interconnect cable, commonly called RCA cable because of the RCA connectors on each end. Since the signal it carries is usually less than 2VAC, gauge isn't a big deal. While installing HT systems for a living, I used to run 22-gauge, shielded cable plus 10-gauge, 2-conductor cable for the sub in case the client decided to use a separate amp in the equipment stack to run the sub woofer.

One thing to note about speaker cable. So-called "high end" speaker wire is 100% hype and 0% benefit. All of the pseudo-scientific drivel in the ads for Monster and all the other makers of "specialty" speaker and interconnect cable is pure and unadulterated bunk. Waste nothing on fancy cable. Save the money for better speakers or nicer gear.

Have fun.

Reply to
Robert L Bass

The purpose of twisted wire for any application, including speakers, is to reduce or cancel any induced voltages to that pair of wires. Sources of induced voltages could be magnetic (transformers, current carrying wire, etc) or Radio Frequency (CB, HAM, etc). So unless you have an amateur radio operator living close by or CBer running an illegal amount of power, you might not have to worry about interference, and the twisted wire pair.

RF Dude

Reply to
RoughRider

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