Amazon Basics 16-Gauge Speaker Wire 1.3 mm² - 30.48 m (100 feet), Bronze

Product Information

Copper clad aluminum (CCA) wire has, in the last few years, become more and more common as the price of copper wiring has gone up. It’s one of those “little things” you might not know when buying that companies aren’t telling you.

To determine the appropriate wire for your speaker, it's essential to calculate the speaker's nominal impedance and the length of the wire run. The resistance of a speaker or audio amplifier to an electrical current is measured by speaker impedance. You can, therefore, accurately estimate how much wire you'll need once you've calculated the impedance in Ohms. TIP: When stripping insulation to expose bare wire you can prevent oxidation over time by “tinning” it (tinning speaker wire means using a soldering iron to flow solder through the exposed conductors and coat them.) If you don’t want to deal with numbers and max lengths, the easiest rule to follow is the one we already gave you – use the lowest possible wire gauge regardless of the wire length or speaker impedance. Also, use the same wire gauge for all the speakers in your home theater setup. Most sound systems today come without a cable to transmit audio signals from the power amplifier to the receiving speaker. Although this presents an excellent opportunity to add a personal touch, choosing the right speaker wire can be a little hectic.This diagram, like the speaker wire electrical model, shows how you can think of a speaker wire connector. Both wire conductors and connections do have some resistance, although a tiny amount that’s negligible when used correctly. Sound quality isn’t a problem unless there’s an unusually bad connection. Braided cables utilize multiple individually insulated conductors (usually 22-26AWG) twisted in a pattern that helps to reduce series mutual inductance but usually at the expense of increased capacitance. Remember anytime you bring conductors closer together, the inductance gets reduced but capacitance goes up. I do appreciate these type of cable designs if they aren't overly blown out of proportion with high capacitance needing a zobel network termination to prevent amplifier oscillation for long runs. Braided cables are a fine choice provided that you aren't sacrificing resistance for the design. Some of my favorite braided cables are the mid priced cables like the 8PR or 8TC from Kimber Kable. However, some of their more expensive cables like the Bifocals exhibit lots of capacitance and are not something I'd recommend for very long runs especially because they are quite cost prohibitive and NOT worth the expense for no sonic benefit, in my opinion. Speaker wires are made up of a bundle of thin conductors that touch each other which keeps capacitance and inductance to a level so small it’s negligible for audio. Other types of cables (like individually insulated conductors) can impact sound – but they’re not speaker wire. One of the largest problems I’ve seen over the years is the amount of hype & exaggeration used to sell overpriced cables of all types: speaker wire, audio cable (like RCA cables), video cables, and even computer & data cables. This is because a longer length creates a higher amount of resistance, thus limiting the power flow.

This distance can be used to calculate the wire gauge required to get the best performance out of your speakers. In the case of speaker wire, if the capacitance were a high value it would be possible for higher frequencies that reach the speaker to be greatly reduced & cause poor sound quality.Besides the power losses, the cable resistance also has an effect on the damping factor. The damping factor represents the ratio of the speaker’s impedance to the source impedance (in our case, cable resistance). What we want is a high damping factor (preferably higher than 50). This means, again, that we want low-resistance speaker cables. When the resistance is higher, the damping factor is lower, and when the damping factor is really low, there’ll be some audible negative effects on the sound similar to effects caused by the power loss (the bass may sound boomy and the whole audio reproduction will become less linear). This kind of bi-amping is known as passive bi-amping. The term passive implies that you’re still using passive crossovers inside your speakers. Active bi-amping is a much more complicated procedure than passive and requires removing the crossovers from your speakers and using an external active crossover. We won’t be talking about active bi-amping in this article. The wire between speaker crossovers and the speakers should be kept fairly short. Excessively long wire to the crossover & at the speakers can cause the crossover’s behavior to change & alter the sound response of the speaker.

The material of your speaker wire should always be considered since it plays an important role in the audio output quality. We have finally reached the end. Hopefully, now you have a much better understanding of speaker wire and know what to look for when buying it. For additional info, read the FAQs section. If you have a question about speaker wire or if you need any advice, leave us a comment below and we will answer promptly. Long (100ft+) speaker runs or higher power applications such as high-power 2 or 4 ohm subwoofers with a short length.The insulation usually has a thin section in the middle which can be torn easily for separating the wires when stripping it, connecting it, and so on. Most of the time one wire is marked with a positive indicator of some kind. Speaker wire vs electrical wire The length depends on a few things & the AWG size (wire gauge) you’re using. There are a few things that make a big difference:

Otherwise, copper-clad aluminum will work just as well if you follow this rule: when buying CCA speaker wire, to get the same quality as true copper cable go up one gauge in size. If you like experimenting with your equipment or have a feeling that your speakers need more power to shine, you can try bi-wiring or bi-amping. So, let’s find out what are bi-wiring and bi-amping, and learn something about the benefits of bi-wiring/bi-amping. between the amplifier and loudspeaker that all other cable parameters will become a wash. This article will As you didn’t include the speaker impedance (this is very important!), I gather it’s 4 Ohms based on the 16AWG result you referred to. I’ll go through this example and validate it using an engineering approach. To determine how much amps 16 gauge speaker wire can handle, consider the voltage drop if you’re running a 10 Amp load over 100 feet of 16 gauge speaker wire. In some cases, a speaker system will lose power because the wire becomes too warm, and you may find your speakers to be unresponsive. It’s also important to remember that wire with too few circular mils can get overheated when connected to a high-powered amp.Power, current, voltage, are critical for calculating wire size we need for any type of electrical load – including the speaker Ohms load. This is one reason why power companies can use high-voltage power lines to distribute thousands of Watts using smaller wire gauge while reducing wire cost power losses over long distances. Speaker wire is normally sold in rolls such as 25ft, 50ft, and 100ft, although some retailers offer it by the foot as well. Once you get a hold of it, power outputs can become easy to guess since they can be categorized depending on their usage.