Speaker Cable Questions

3 replies
BL
Offline
Blydenstein
Bronze
Posted February 23, 2014 at 23:54 GMT
#2247764

Hi

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but I'm looking to put some new speaker cables on my Beovox 3800's that are hooked up to my Beomaster 4400.

Thing is, I need to have a fairly long run, probably 15m to each speaker, and I need to re-solder one end of each cable to the connection inside the speaker, and I wanted to ask, what is the best cable to use ?, that will not lose too much signal over the run, could I use a thicker cable than the original, etc.?.

If anyone could give me some cable specs, with preferably some sizes and specification numbers etc, as I'm not very good with electrics and don't really understand all the variables involved.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

 

 

mexking
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mexking
Bronze
Posted February 24, 2014 at 01:19 GMT
#2247765

The B&O standard speaker wire is a normal multi stranded copper wire, 1.5 square mm. 16 AWG, (if I remember right) if you go up to 2 square mm (14 AWG) for 15 meter you should be OK. Do not go for oxygen free or other sophisticate descriptions of speaker wire. Oxygen free wire do not exist, the closest they get to oxygen free is 0.0005 % and that is nearly impossible to reach (very very expensive manufacturing) and that will only give you 1% better conduction. Which do not matter for sound. So buy normal copper wire like the B&O original and no snake oil. Take a piece of the B&O wire with you when you buy, you can then compare strands and AWG thickness.

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DARoss (archived2)
Bronze
Posted February 24, 2014 at 14:11 GMT
#2247766

I'll probably be called a "snake oil salesman" by the above poster............

Everybody's hearing is different, mine is sensitive & I can tell the differences between cables at reasonable costs, however I was at a show & couldn't tell the difference between cables costing £1000 to £2000!

I get my cables from "future shop"

link

I recently got this Atlas cable for my B&O system & I noticed a difference, sounded way better than the standard B&O cables!

link

Which is "2.0 sq mm 99.9997% pure OFC copper multi-stranded concentric conductors" & costs £4.50/m

The main reason that I used this is I have the Bi-wire version on my Denon/Monitor Audio system & it's great!

However I would recommend a twisted pair cable for long runs to stop the cables acting like aerials & picking up interference. (telephone & CAT5, CAT6 etc are all twisted pair)

I would recommend this cable which costs £2.70/m

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