Looking for Speaker Guidance

[MrYiff]

So finally planning to upgrade my speakers as I think my ancient corsair ones are finally starting to die and based on reading here it looks like the general consensus is that PC speakers are either pretty rubbish or overpriced RGB crap so I'm planning to dive into a 'real' speaker setup

Current plan is to try and stay around £200 unless there is a really compelling reason to go over.

On my list so far:

• Wharfedale Diamond 220's (I had looked at 9.0's and 9.1's but is there any reason to go with either of these over the 220's which appear to be the current model?).
• SMSL SA-50 amp (minimal price increase over the well recommended SA-36 so I figured why not).
• Fisual Banana plugs (assuming these will fit both speakers and amp?).

My main questions so far I think are around cabling and whether it is worth bi-wiring the speakers which the 220's seem to support and then if I do bi-wire them how to connect them to the amp, it looks like Fisual do a stackable banana plug I could use for this, and then finally what sort of cable should I be using to hook all this up, will basic speaker cable from that river named online store be good enough or should I be getting something more specific?

 

[MrYiff]

Yeah, the Bi-wire option is an interesting idea, but opinions on whether it's worth it vary from "omg the difference is amazing" to "can't notice anything", there isn't a massive cost to doing it I guess but it would be nice to have a better idea as to whether it is worth it or not.

 

[MrYiff]

No harm in having a go

Yeah, it's not that much more expensive for the nice stacking plugs I guess, I think im just curious as to whether there is any noticeable difference (especially with my lowish end speakers, I guess it might be more obvious with higher end kit).

 

[MrYiff]

If you're happy paying the price difference then go for the 220's. I've personally not heard them so can't compare them to the 9.0's which sound good for their price. I'd imagine they've improved some things since the 9 series.

Regarding speaker wire just make sure it is OFC and you can't really go wrong. Fisual do their own speaker wire which should suffice to go with their banana plugs.

Thanks, is there any size/gauge cable I should be looking for? I see different widths like 2.5mm and 14/16 gauge cables but I'm a complete novice when it comes to this stuff (give me a complex windows server issue and im at home, audio stuff though....)

 

[MrYiff]

14AWG (american wire gauge) is the same as 2.5mm2. 16AWG is 1.5mm2. 14 is as big as I'd go and 18 is about as small as I'd go for normal domestic speaker wiring over sensible distances. Just make sure that the cable you use is completely copper rather than copper clad aluminium. (CCA) Nothing wrong with what @brakeinup suggested by using 2 core mains flex. I've used both decent speaker cable and 2 core mains flex and noticed zero difference.

Perfect, that was exactly the info I was looking for! Already looking for pure copper as I've dealt with CCA before in crappy cheap network cables!

 

[MrYiff]

Thanks for all the suggestions, got a bit antsy tonight and said sod it and placed the order so I get to spend my friday night wiring everything up