So I’ve moved the lounge around and the speakers will now be on the long wall. Amp is not moving so the speaker cables are too short.
I may get all whizzy and put some speaker outlets in the wall.
I am not getting into cable wars but do I just use lighting cable or cough up for something which will a give a good sound.
Probably need 14 metres of cable.
You want the resistance of the cables to be negligible compared with the impedance of the speakers and you also want the cables to be durable and, I guess, reasonably flexible. These requirements point towards a multi-stranded copper core whose cross-section is large enough to keep the resistance down but not so large that it makes the cable hard to bend and plugs hard to find. I’ve contented myself with ‘bog standard’ 2.5mm2 speaker cable in the past. That’ll be thicker than most lighting cable. It seems to be available for around £1.40+VAT per twin-core metre if you want a 50m reel. Do you want 14m in total or 14m per speaker ?
Is shielding not required then? I was under the impression is was at least advisable if stuff was around other electronics.
14 m in total.
I’ve used quite thick cable in a transparent sleeve I got from Seven oaks seemed ok to me and better than bell wire.
I remember seeing a demo by Serge a few years ago in which everything was connected by mains cable. Sounded great
Exactly this. I use 2.5 twin & earth cooker wire. It looks shit but does the job
Please never do any DIY electrics.
Shielding of speaker leads generally shouldn’t be required. Since the connectors tend to be ‘accessible’ it’s often the case that one of the speaker cores is connected to ground, for safety reasons. In any case the output impedance of the amp will be low (typically less than an ohm) so it’ll be difficult for any external noise source to generate any significant voltage across that. This is the end of the amp where the electronic ‘muscle’ is, if you like. It should be hard to push it around.
All that said, there have been a few cases where long speaker leads have acted as aerials and fed the local taxis’ radio signals back into amps. You have to ask questions about those amps’ designs though …
Aha, I think I understand. Essentially, if you need a shielded cable, it probably means another component is screwy in some way. Definitely worth knowing.
I can wire a plug but that’s about it for me