Speaker cables for surrounds

The cable needs be to the required gauge for the length of the run and the power required. Calculate what you need and then get the highest gauge that meets your needs.
 
energizer123 said:
Hi all,

Any recommendations for speaker cables for my surrounds. I need to run it over a door way and across a room so the thinner the better.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Beware "the thinnest possible". It can kill the sound.

A long time ago when I started my equipment installation business one of my first customers had a similar requirement.

I had done most of the house during an extensive refit. A lounge, office, kitchen, bedroom + en suite and a games room all had either AV or pure Hi-Fi installed along with several Sonos music players. Then we came to the dining room. Other than the kids bedrooms, this was about the only room left where tge existing decoration was to remain intact. No chance to channel tge walls then.

He insisted I use a really thin cable. It was about the gauge that comes free with those old ministers stereos. At a guess I'd say it was less than 0.6mm cross sectional area. There was a nice Onkyo CD receiver paired with a couple of original KEF Eggs. Not my favourite speakers but relatively small and discrete, and fine when partnered with a small sub.

All the gear had been tested beforehand, so I knew nothing was faulty. The Onkyo sounded really nice into the 6.5" kitchen ceiling speakers. (Better than the KEFs IMO.)

Come the day of that part of the installation, the KEFs sounded crap. I even took them down from their perches high in the room corners and tried then direct with short leads from the Onkyo. Nope, no issues. Put them back and they sounded crap again. The thin cable was strangling the power. Eggs need a bit of juice to wake up, but these thin speaker cables were the equivalent of a partly blocked pipe.

Have a look at 1mm cross sectional area (CSA) flat speaker cable. The first thing I found via Google was from a company called mkshop. However, theirs is aluminium with an anodised copper layer. It's known as CCA. That stuff is crap. Get 100% copper.

At 20m runs, an all copper 1.0mm CSA cable will lose around 15% of the amp power. Going to 1.5mm CSA won't make a huge difference. Its about a 12% loss.

The numbers will change is your cable runs are longer though.
 
lucid said:
Beware "the thinnest possible". It can kill the sound.

A long time ago when I started my equipment installation business one of my first customers had a similar requirement.

I had done most of the house during an extensive refit. A lounge, office, kitchen, bedroom + en suite and a games room all had either AV or pure Hi-Fi installed along with several Sonos music players. Then we came to the dining room. Other than the kids bedrooms, this was about the only room left where tge existing decoration was to remain intact. No chance to channel tge walls then.

He insisted I use a really thin cable. It was about the gauge that comes free with those old ministers stereos. At a guess I'd say it was less than 0.6mm cross sectional area. There was a nice Onkyo CD receiver paired with a couple of original KEF Eggs. Not my favourite speakers but relatively small and discrete, and fine when partnered with a small sub.

All the gear had been tested beforehand, so I knew nothing was faulty. The Onkyo sounded really nice into the 6.5" kitchen ceiling speakers. (Better than the KEFs IMO.)

Come the day of that part of the installation, the KEFs sounded crap. I even took them down from their perches high in the room corners and tried then direct with short leads from the Onkyo. Nope, no issues. Put them back and they sounded crap again. The thin cable was strangling the power. Eggs need a bit of juice to wake up, but these thin speaker cables were the equivalent of a partly blocked pipe.

Have a look at 1mm cross sectional area (CSA) flat speaker cable. The first thing I found via Google was from a company called mkshop. However, theirs is aluminium with an anodised copper layer. It's known as CCA. That stuff is crap. Get 100% copper.

At 20m runs, an all copper 1.0mm CSA cable will lose around 15% of the amp power. Going to 1.5mm CSA won't make a huge difference. Its about a 12% loss.

The numbers will change is your cable runs are longer though.
Click to expand...
Thanks - this is really helpful. Appreciate you taking the time.

I’ve ended up from looking at £1000 floor standers to replace what I had, to £7k somehow on speakers and a new amp so no point in cutting corners now. Very happy with it all but surrounds just with cheap cables at the moment across the floor.

Assume the below would be too thin

Chord Sarsen Speaker Cable​

 
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energizer123 said:
Thanks - this is really helpful. Appreciate you taking the time.

I’ve ended up from looking at £1000 floor standers to replace what I had, to £7k somehow on speakers and a new amp so no point in cutting corners now. Very happy with it all but surrounds just with cheap cables at the moment across the floor.

Assume the below would be too thin

Chord Sarsen Speaker Cable​

Click to expand...

The Chord stuff is 0.8mm CSA. Comparing 20m runs, the power loss is a shade under 20%.

I have to be honest, paying £10/m for 0.8mm copper would break my heart, especially if they were fairly lengthy runs. For example, 2 x 20m would be £400 + termination if you decided to go for Chord's fancy plugs. At that price it might almost be cheaper to get thicker but less exotic cable and then pay one of the local DIY firms to come run the leads out of sight.

3.2mm outer diameter is very small. It's about the thickness of a £1 coin. I do a double-screened subwoofer lead at that size to kill hum and make hiding the cable easier.IIt doesn't have to carry anything like the current drawn by a speaker, so 40-50m isn't a problem. I never thought I'd see a Hi-Fi brand speaker cable that size though.
 
Expensive speaker cable is 100% snake oil, Chord? Scam mate

KabelDirekt – Pure Copper Stereo Audio Speaker Wire & Cable – Made in Germany – 2x4mm² – 15m – (For Hifi Speakers and Surround Sound Systems, Pure Copper, with polarity markings)​


£30
 
gailjon said:
What difference did you notice? MY rear cable runs d are quite long, so plenty could be removed.
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The amp was louder at the same volume setting and had much more bass and possibly clarity, it was very suprising, even though in hindsight it shouldn't have been.
I also changed the old, soldered terminals to (branded) banana plugs and heat shrunk the cable to plug interface and made some short speaker jumper cables from some of the spare for bonus points.
So if you can do it I would say do it but leave a bit of slack for equipment / speaker changes of position.
Let us know how you get on :)
 
Nobski said:
The amp was louder at the same volume setting and had much more bass and possibly clarity, it was very suprising, even though in hindsight it shouldn't have been.
I also changed the old, soldered terminals to (branded) banana plugs and heat shrunk the cable to plug interface and made some short speaker jumper cables from some of the spare for bonus points.
So if you can do it I would say do it but leave a bit of slack for equipment / speaker changes of position.
Let us know how you get on :)
Click to expand...
Why would you be getting bass from the rears?

Edit, on rereading, I assume you changed all cables, not just rears. What gauge did you go for?
 
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So I design and build audio gear as a DIY hobby.

There's a lot of bunkem around cables, however the core (if you excuse the pun) aspects are:
a) Enough cross-sectional area to carry the expected current peaks.
b) That the impedance (AC resistance) doesn't attenuate the sound and the capacitance/inductance doesn't distort the sound spectrum (ie what goes in comes out). Long cables = more impedance hence attentuation of the sound signal. The longer a cable, the more capacitance and inductance you will have too. So reducing impedance, capacitance and inductance from the cable run should improve the sound.

A stereo/home theatre isn't a set of individual boxes, but a linked system. The speakers will be 'seen' by the amplifier output along with the cable, and vice versa. Changing the cable not only changes the what is transmitted between the amplifier and speaker but also the behaviour of the amplifier output and the speaker (cross over and drivers).

On the subject of expensive metals - gold is useful because it does not corrode (which impacts transfer of the signal) hence it makes great connectors. Silver and copper both oxidise over time so talk of OFC Oxygen Free Copper is all good but by the time you get the cable that will no longer be the case. However having pure copper or any metal conducting electricity helps reduce noise cause by the current having to flow around the non-conducting impurities (whether you'd hear that - unlikely as it's typically well below -120dB which is most people's limit of hearing quiet stuff).
Silver is often touted - it's better than copper at conducting yes, but plating with silver doesn't normally do much. Audio frequencies travel through the insides of the copper whereas radio frequencies (RF) travel closer to the skin of the metal the higher frequency the RF is. Adding silver plating to a copper wire helps high frequency (RF) but for 20-20KHz (your hearing range) then nope. Even in the case of a 20-20KHz square waves where the square of the wave requires harmonics to correctly build the square shape, the harmonics that are above -120dB typically below the frequency (Ie <100KHz) that would even start making use of silver. Now a solid silver wire conducts better than solid copper but in reality only signals below noise floor of most theatre systems/stereos would make use of that. Perfect bragging rights and a demonstration if not understanding what the system is doing.

In terms of impact on characteristics, the runs of copper/other metals and the components of the cross over or amp output can create natural low and high pass filters. What these will do is attenuate the trebles and the bass response. I've the luxury of being able to make a bode plot for the frequency response (for amps but it could be used for speaker cables if sensitive enough). In the end the speakers and room are likely to make a bigger impact on the sound you hear in the room once you get the right cross sectional area for the connection and cable.

So for me the perfect cable would be pure copper with the correct properties with soldered connectors with the outside of the connectors plated in gold to ensure no tarnish disrupts the signal.

In the past I used the same cables at the front as well as the back - the reason is similar electrical characteristics. Even though the rear channels old older dolby systems are limited in frequency range. I then used floor standers for the back too - this meant that the only limitation was the dolby encoded signal and the decoder itself.

Just be careful of voltages from amps outputs - I have a 50W stereo amp, sounds small until you realise it can output 70V peak to peak on the speaker terminals. Short that to ground and it will hurt/kill. So you can get banana plugs that are shielded (requires a shielded socket too) which can rate up to 600Vdc or 1000Vdc. Having said that I use bare banana plugs but I don't have kids.
 
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