The Case For Thick Speaker Wire

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SuperjazzyJa

18 Wheel Member
Let me first indicate that my wife is certainly notan audiophile, audio enthusiast, etc. Her motto is, "As long as I can hear it, that's all I care about.":no:

I know there has been much debate about whether or not the guage of speaker wire makes a difference. My experience was that about 3 1/2 years ago, I replaced my 16 Awg with 12 Awg and noticed a huge improvement right away. After a couple of days, I notice even more improvement. Whether that increase improvement is the wire, my ears or both, I couldn't tell you. A day or 2 later, I was listening to "Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Vol 1" when my wife walked in. She had heard Scenes From An Italian Restauranton my system before, with the 16 Awg wire. This time, she froze! After about a minute, she pointed out many things she'd never heard before in that song even on my system. I said, "That's why I bought the 12 guage speaker wire." She said, "Oh, okay." in a tone clearly suggesting the light had come on and never question my need to upgrade or tweek again. :D
 
A war is about to start! IMO, cables do improve sound, but there is so much to it, AWG is not everything, like construction. I am in the process of doing new DIY speaker cables to replace my current 12AWG Vampire DIY set. I will be using 0.7mm 99.95% bare silver solid wire with teflon tubing covering each one, then braiding 3-pcs. and covering with shrink tube, still deciding on which ends to use.
 
I hope you're wrong about a war starting. 2 of my threads got shut down here in the speaker section recently and I fear I'm on thin ice with the mods.

I agree that Awg is not everything. In a different system, thinner guage Audio Quest wire might actually work better than the 12 awg monster I use in this one. However, this is why I lean toward thicker wire in most cases.
 
I hope you're wrong about a war starting. 2 of my threads got shut down here in the speaker section recently and I fear I'm on thin ice with the mods.

I agree that Awg is not everything. In a different system, thinner guage Audio Quest wire might actually work better than the 12 awg monster I use in this one. However, this is why I lean toward thicker wire in most cases.

I say it in good fun, everyone has a different opinion regarding cables. As you mentioned synergy in a system is a big part. Are you using the cables straight? Do you like DIY? It is easy to make your cables look like expensive cables done by a pro manufacturer.
 
Now 2 of can discuss speaker wire. Guess it's better than the alternatives.

I have never DIYed much of anything save for a few easy repairs and some simple solutions to some issues.

What I find amazing is how much money companies put into gimmicks and touting such gimmicks as legit. EG, Monster claims that the 12 awg wire I use features time correction. Really? When used in a single wire set up? Yeah, sure. Audio Quest is guilty of a similar claim. Don't get me wrong, I like the wire I use, but I don't buy the time correction thing 1 iota.
 
I also noticed a HUGE difference when I discovered that the newer, thinner, (OFC) DIY store speaker wire was totally upstaged by the older (by at least 25 years) original QED 79 strand (ordinary copper) 'bog standard' ribbon cable. (difference in CSA roughly a factor of 3)

I still occasionally use the lengths of newer stuff, on a very temporary basis - but now I know its limitations :smoke:
 
I also noticed a HUGE difference when I discovered that the newer, thinner, (OFC) DIY store speaker wire was totally upstaged by the older (by at least 25 years) original QED 79 strand (ordinary copper) 'bog standard' ribbon cable. (difference in CSA roughly a factor of 3)

I still occasionally use the lengths of newer stuff, on a very temporary basis - but now I know its limitations :smoke:

I'd venture to guess that guage is a bigger factor in this example than old vs new. Just saying...
 
The case for using thicker gauge wire is generally good for the guy that finally realized he spent way too much on them, and got extremely depressed and jumped out the window with a hank of it wrapped around his neck. It made sure he got the job done properly in the end.....

Just kidding. I don't get too worked up over all the wire talk, but I do believe that some types of wire seem to work better with certain types of gear, so always some good advice here and there. And some not so much. Do what sounds right by your own ears! Tim
 
The case for using thicker gauge wire is generally good for the guy that finally realized he spent way too much on them, and got extremely depressed and jumped out the window with a hank of it wrapped around his neck. It made sure he got the job done properly in the end.....

Just kidding. I don't get too worked up over all the wire talk, but I do believe that some types of wire seem to work better with certain types of gear, so always some good advice here and there. And some not so much. Do what sounds right by your own ears! Tim

I sure aint hangin' myself after hearing the improvement and hope no one gets worked up. I introduce threads with intent to have fun with the subject at hand. Unfortunately, some folks do get worked up. I guess I suck at starting threads.
 
I sure aint hangin' myself after hearing the improvement and hope no one gets worked up. I introduce threads with intent to have fun with the subject at hand. Unfortunately, some folks do get worked up. I guess I suck at starting threads.

There's more people in TOL who are believers in cable differences than you might think, me for one. I've found guage generally makes a difference, thicker wire most of the time an improvement as you found. I just went through a sickening ( I mean fun) process of auditioning about 10 or so types of speaker cables.
I found some that work for me but also discovered some interesting types of cable that worked really well. One odd looking design, a very flat cable with extremely thin insulation, Alpha Core Goertz, were VERY good and were in the middle of the pack cost wise. There's no shortage of cables, very affordable to incredibly expensive, to choose from. There's even more opinions.
Glad you found something you like!
Keep believing what you hear. There your ears:D
 
Superjazzy, don't worry, that is why at the start of my second paragraph I said "just kidding", no worries man. I don't care what anyone does, as others have said, it is your ears, and it is all that matters.

Most people would think I am nuts for buying a British Naim amplifier, and for that matter, using their speaker cable versus anything else, so yes, I do believe wire does matter along with a lot of other things, measurable or not! I'm with you!

I guess the strange humor in me just leaked out a bit at the wrong time......
 
I'm going to chime in here with my own experience regarding speaker cable and that's that I had the exact same thing happen when I moved to thicker cable from lamp cord.

Specifcally I moved up to "megacable" from Home Depot which I don't think they sell anymore, but it was cheap as chips. The wire goes from the Outlaw 750 amp to the DefTech BP2002 towers. I think it's 12AWG but it might be 10...don't remember.

It wasn't a subtle improvement. It was very noticable. This doesn't mean I am an advocate of cryo-anything or palladuim coated gold connectors, but on this subject I agree that bigger is better. Where does it stop getting better? I dunno. If I ever get my hands on some 8 or 4 AWG speaker wire, I might give it a try and listen.
 
I have purposely not mentioned the result of swapping in some 8ga wire in place of the 16ga I was running.

Several reasons I didn't say anything - the controversy, my own opinion of the prevalance of confimation bias and the simple fact that I'm not using "speaker wire". I'm using something I've had for years, came off a jobsite I was on, this was used for grounding.

The result is that my system is changed. Odd changes, changes I didn't expect and any description would be so subjective and vague as to be meaningless.
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I am surprised no one has mentioned wire resistance in their post.

I wonder if SuperjazzyJa has ever used the forum CHAT to get opinions from some of the CHAT users?
 
I have purposely not mentioned the result of swapping in some 8ga wire in place of the 16ga I was running.

Several reasons I didn't say anything - the controversy, my own opinion of the prevalance of confimation bias and the simple fact that I'm not using "speaker wire". I'm using something I've had for years, came off a jobsite I was on, this was used for grounding.

The result is that my system is changed. Odd changes, changes I didn't expect and any description would be so subjective and vague as to be meaningless.
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Wire is wire. Some are usable for speaker connections some is not. I would guess that for practical purposes, it has to be stranded wire otherwise it would be like plumbing a brake system for a car. But other than that, "a metal wire that conducts electricity" works.

One never knows what the next tweak could be!:banana:
 
This doesn't mean I am an advocate of cryo-anything or palladuim coated gold connectors, but on this subject I agree that bigger is better. Where does it stop getting better? I dunno. If I ever get my hands on some 8 or 4 AWG speaker wire, I might give it a try and listen.

I don't think about cable much, but I remember doing some quick estimates of the skin depth in copper cables at 20K. I think it's around 1 mm. At some point, a diminishing return for cable thickness alone will come into play. 12 ga wire is about 2.0 mm in diameter.

Cheers,

Otto
 
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