High end speaker wire

[riverrat373]

Check out this article on high end speaker wire at:www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm. As the former director of acoustic research at McIntosh labs, I think he is well qualified to write on this subject! Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_17

[mesherm]

The word "Monster" only describes the profits made and the gullibilty of the buyer.

[EWBrown]

I just use the heavy-duty "zip cord" from Home Despot or similar home supply stores. The 14 gage is more than adequate. It's intended for audio use, but I'm sure that it also ends up as fancy looking (nice clear insulation) lamp cords as well. For less critical applications, the 18 gage brown or black hardware store zip cord is perfectly good. Heck, I've been known to decapitate an extension cord in times of emergency Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_06

Unless you're dealing wth a multi-multi-kilobuck system and soeakers, the "fancy boutique" speaker wire will have no discernable effect other than the "placebo" effect, which is 100% imaginary... The main effect is the lightening of the content of one's bank account :o by many many db (as in dollar bills)

Most of the fancy speaker cable belongs in the "WTF" and snake oil categories Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_02 Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_09 Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_04 Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_03

I read all those wild and ridiculous BS claims in Audio Advisor, Maple Shade and Crutchfield catalogs, I just see it as a source of humor whilst I'm perched upon the porcelain throne... :parp:

/ed B

[dcriner]

If somebody advertised a cure for cancer or a gadget that would double your car's gas mileage, wouldn't (shouldn't?) the Federal Trade Commission investigate?

The people that sell fraudulent audio stuff are crooks, for sure. But those who buy the stuff are dummies - but since they seemingly can afford it, no harm, no foul?

[EWBrown]

PT Barnum said that there was a sucker born every minute, and WC Fields said that it was no crime to separate a sucker from his money...

THere is only a fine legal line betwen purveyors of audiophoolery, and outright fraud. Maybe bilking the foolish isn't considered a crime, as per Me Fields Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_09 Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_16

/ed B (wanna buy some nice Nigerian beachfront property ?) Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_03

[Geek]

(wanna buy some nice Nigerian beachfront property ?) Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_03

I'll trade you 11 acres of Sahara desert for it Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_16
(the job of evicting the squatting tenants [some guys with tanks and machine guns] will be all yours)

[erichayes]

Romex. 14Ga romex. That's what Bud and Bob Neil (maker of $20,000 speaker systems and $15,000 stereo condenser microphones, among other gadgets) and I use. Yes, it's unwieldy, and you have to make a flexible pigtail for each end (using zip cord as Ed suggests), but it works as well as, or better than any boutique speaker cable.

As far as O2 free goes . . . if your cable conductors aren't green, they're oxygen free.

[EWBrown]

Whenever I see any fanciful flowery flowing pseudo-scientific mystical descriptions or mysterious alphabet soup acronyms in a product description, my BS alarm immediately goes off at ear-peircing SPL Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_04 This malarkey is just to lull the unsophisticated ignorant gullible consumers and appliance operators into a false sense of security that the particular product is God's gift to the world Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_21

"Ultra-pure, oxygen-free, long-crystalline virgin copper" is simply pure marketing hype BS... Normal BS at least can be useful for fertilizing a garden, but marketing hype BS is all 100% pure pollution Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_04

/ed B

[DerekVa]

"Ultra-pure, oxygen-free, long-crystalline virgin copper" is simply pure marketing hype BS...

And it won't be virgin after I've played some Motorhead through it... Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_08

-D

[EWBrown]

I'd SWAG that Motorhead or Ron Zombie would cause the wire to transmute into some strange, extra-terrestrial, super-conducting alloy... Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_04

I started the "mystery box" triage last night, and found two "mystery" 3-way AR crossover boards, two Burroughs self-scan "nixie" displays, one matching power supply, my long-lost nixie freq counter and a shipload of vintage 7400 series ICs. And that was only the first of about fifty... :o

The crossovers have fairly long leads of some "fancy looking Oxygen Free Copper" 12 gage wires. The only reference to them being AR is the markings on the wire, and something like "Classic 7s" marked on the PC boards.

Way down deep , in the mist inaccessible reaches of the piles of boxes, is one "xerox paper" box rather tantalizingly labelled "tubes", which hasn't seen the light of day in about 20 years... :o I have absolutely no idea what lurks inside... Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_11

/ed B

[CpuZapper]

I have tried some cheaper speaker cable options.
Braided Ethernet cable.
Zip cord or power cord and heavy speaker cable.

But my pick is Copper foil coax.