Speaker cable

[admin_exported]

Quick question peeps. A friend of mine who has some good audio kit in his home, says he uses standard 230v rated 3 core flex cable to wire his speakers. He says its better than most high end speaker cable.

Is this true or should i look at installing good quality speaker cable?

Obviously its a lot cheaper and would save some serious cash on the install of my own system

 

[Anonymous]

Well theoretically it is because mains cable has to be 100% pure copper otherwise the impurities in it could melt when the current is passed through it. but i dont really know if it is in practice, sorry.

 

[Anonymous]

There is a school of thought that says any suitably thick bell wire (2 core) will do the job. So a 2 core 5 amp mains flex will work for example.

There is also a school of thought that says that all speaker cables sound the same.

However (as a generalisation due to the length of the speaker cable) the cable does have elctrical properties - it has a certain resistance, capacitance and inductance. These properties can be influenced relative to each other by the design of the cable and this can potentially have an audible effect on the sound you hear.

So your friend is not wrong in that if he likes the sound then that's great as it works for him. Of course that's not so say that you'll like the sound in your set-up so you might want to try something else.

 

[Anonymous]

thanks for the replies guys. i passed by his place again today and must admit, everything sounds spot on.

i guess this is a question with many different answers and views. i am wiring mine tomorrow and still cant decide what to do. guess i will just have to standby my own judgement, cause once its in them walls and plastered, thats it!

thanks

 

[Anonymous]

If it's going in the wall then put it in in conduit and put in a waxed cord as well so if you want to pull something different in later you have the chance to change it. That top hat stuff will work fine.

 

[Anonymous]

I have some 20mm plastic conduit, because i was gonna do just that. Thanks