Speaker Cable.. what to get?

Skully said:
After reading AV Forums extensively I went with B&Q regular speaker cable on their recommendation.

Works and sounds nice with my amp and speakers.
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I think I'll grab some next time I'm down there.. at least it won't cost an arm and a leg!
 
http://www.vdctrading.com/products_gridview.asp?SubSectionID=1&Page=3&ProductID=1068#p1068

this is what im buying for the new cinema room. i need 70 meters! for full 7.1! supposed to be a level up from vd blue and better than many £100 / metre cables! who the hell pays some of these prices? i saw some at over £1000/metre!

im not sure to go banana plugs or not, wiring up a 7.1 amp is a bit of a nightmare and im intending to bury the cabling in the floor. i would need 38 of them as im bi-wiring the LCR and single wiring the surround and surround rears. unfortunately i cant really use the current wiring i have. oh well i think i will ebay all my spare wiring. i have loads of it.
 
realBabelfish said:
im not sure to go banana plugs or not, wiring up a 7.1 amp is a bit of a nightmare and im intending to bury the cabling in the floor. i would need 38 of them as im bi-wiring the LCR and single wiring the surround and surround rears. unfortunately i cant really use the current wiring i have. oh well i think i will ebay all my spare wiring. i have loads of it.
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I've banana plugged up the amp end just for ease tbh. Easier to plug that in that try to get the cables in and tidy. Speaker end is much easier so I haven't bothered there.
 
realBabelfish said:
for movies maybe but audio might be different. do you do 5.1/71 stereo for music or pro-logic music setting or just 2.0 stereo?

same length as if not you can get echoes in sound. the longer cable takes a fraction of a second longer to reach its destination.

my denon amp actually sorts out this issue as do most decent amps.
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Err, no.

The signal traveling down the cable is virtually at the speed of light and differences in cable length make such a small difference that you would never, ever perceive it. The distance setting that you're referring to with the AV amp is down to the distance for each speaker to your listening position. The speed of sound is significantly slower and so this has a huge impact on the timing of the system. The auto setups on AV amps try to work this out, but in truth you can't beat an old fashioned tape measure! :)
 
atmax1 said:
If im honest I dont know a great deal about audio/video, I am trying to learn though but this is what I got at the moment..
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First thing you will learn when you start reading.

The internet and the general press is full of certain people, whom i nickname the "believers"

The believers firmly and truely believe that the amount you spend on your cable is proportional to how good the sound or picture is. They are adament that they can tell the difference between a cheap and expensive cable, even HDMI ones.

These people would have you spending thousands on cables and will quite happily talk for ages about how amazing their setup sounds now they put their speakers on these super amazing £1000 stands.

For normal people, any cable will do, and you can put your speakers anywhere you like. Take everything you read with a pinch of salt, and try and see if you can find someway of testing the differences yourself.

When i was choosing my home cinema setup,i drove myself mad trying to sift through the advice as to whether you needed expensive cable or not, what speakers were good, which were bad, how to mount them etc... In the end i decided i didn't need to worry about stuff and just bought some speakers and some cable, and couldn't be happier with the choice. You may well be a believer too, but make sure you end up one through your own choices and experiences, not from reading stuff from others.
 
MrLOL said:
First thing you will learn when you start reading.

The internet and the general press is full of certain people, whom i nickname the "believers"

The believers firmly and truely believe that the amount you spend on your cable is proportional to how good the sound or picture is. They are adament that they can tell the difference between a cheap and expensive cable, even HDMI ones.

These people would have you spending thousands on cables and will quite happily talk for ages about how amazing their setup sounds now they put their speakers on these super amazing £1000 stands.

For normal people, any cable will do, and you can put your speakers anywhere you like. Take everything you read with a pinch of salt, and try and see if you can find someway of testing the differences yourself.

When i was choosing my home cinema setup,i drove myself mad trying to sift through the advice as to whether you needed expensive cable or not, what speakers were good, which were bad, how to mount them etc... In the end i decided i didn't need to worry about stuff and just bought some speakers and some cable, and couldn't be happier with the choice. You may well be a believer too, but make sure you end up one through your own choices and experiences, not from reading stuff from others.
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Thanks, I find it hard to choose and pulling my hair out as Ive spoke to both sides and it drives you mad as you don't know whos right lol my next question on here will be the speakers.

But at the moment I'm enjoying my Onkyo left .. centre .. right plus bass setup with DTS on my amp, is bass speaker cable the same tho? thicker the cable the better? or a £1 cable good enouth?
 
mate, any cable is good enough, As others have posted here, they've been using cat5e networking cable and are more than happy with the sound.
 
Subwoofer cable is a little different. It's a line level signal rather than high level, and due to the nature of subs low frequencies you're likely to pick up hum and interference if using a poorly insulated cable. Some houses are worse than others for interference (generally older houses wiring is worse) and it also depends if your sub cable has to lie next to any power cables. When using crap cheap in cables in my old house, I could tell if the fridge was on or not! :D
 
I just use Van Damme Blue these days. Used to swear by Chord Rumour. But when I moved everything around a couple of years ago I didn't fancy spending hundreds on new cabling. Don't get me wrong, the Chord Rumour was very subtly better then the Van Damme Blue but not so much so that I was prepared to pay 10 times the amount to wire my house. I would buy it again for short stereo runs if I ever get my hifi room. Arrr one day.
 
lol I live in a old house (with family still at the moment) and mine humms it's annoying lol so get one thats well insulated and it should cut that down? at the moment its the very thin cable that came with it... but im going to move the sub closer to my tv so im going to have to buy a longer one anyway.

I know this is off topic but you guys seem down to earth and with it and will save me spaming the forums, if you had £300 - £400 to spend on speakers front left - right and centre and maybe a sub (could always save for that as one i have is ok at the moment) what would you go with? I use for music and movies and xbox/ps3 when i play but i mostly use my astros for that so gaming dont really matter... I don't mind floor standing or book shelf as once my brothers stuff is out im going to have it all nice or even a 5.1 package is there good enouth?

As for Van Damme Blue I will check it out, I will get 25m and see how it compares, I dont mind spending the money long as its going to be good, I now know about 50m should do my room.
 
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Buy the thickest mains flex you can afford (and whatever will fit into the binding posts), job done.

Edit: I bought some Van Damme Blue for my own stuff but that's because it cost only slightly more than mains flex and I needed the extra flexibility of it.
 
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Just spent £1200 on cable. I can not tell the difference between my £50 a meter Chord Epic, and some cheap 60p a meter unbranded cable. OH GOD WHY
 
I bought some decent cable on EBAY which ended up being about 1m too short for my needs. I didn't have lots of cash to go and buy some more so I picked up some really cheap cable for my surrounds. The stuff I got sounds perfect without any electrical hum at all.

I have expensive cables for my front and centres - but that was about £4 per meter. I didn't have cash for that around the satellites. I have a big room and I don't have carpet to cabling had to go around the walls.
 
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