Speaker wire for my basement

[SCRawl]

I'm going to be renovating my basement, right down to the wall studs. I currently have a crappy little home theatre system, but I figure that I'll eventually want to put something in that's a little more substantial.

To that end, I'm asking for some recommendations for what type/brand of speaker wire to run behind the walls while I have them exposed, for future use. I figure that there are enough audiophiles here that I ought to get a fairly good idea. Or at least a better idea than I have now.

[aerius]

Cat6 network cable. I kid you not, it's actually of higher quality than 99% of the speaker wires out there and that includes the $500 a metre stuff. The 8 strands in each cable are roughly equivalent to a 14-15 guage cable when you tie them all together. Run a cable each for (+) and (-) and you're good to go. Cheap too, the local store sells it for about 10 cents a foot.

[Glocksman]

That, or plain 115v electric cabling like this 100 foot roll from Lowe's for $39.
Of course if you want to go really cheap, plain lamp cord works fairly well too.

[aerius]

Lamp cord is going a bit too far in the cheapness department. Once it's cut, it has a bad tendency to corrode near the ends as air & moisture gets in under the insulation and starts a reaction between the copper and the insulation. Loew's electical cable has a good rep as a budget speaker cable, the only downside is that it's bulky, ugly, and pretty damn stiff.

[Braedley]

That, or plain 115v electric cabling like this 100 foot roll from Lowe's for $39.
Of course if you want to go really cheap, plain lamp cord works fairly well too.

I would deffinately not go that route, for a number of reasons. Although the resistance portion of the complex impeadance is very small, and as well as the conductance and capacitance (both of which you want to keep small as well), you have no idea what the inductance of the cable is. That's what will kill your signal. (It's also what kills DSL connections out in the boonies, but that's a different story.) I would go with aerius' suggestion. Cat 6 is designed for high frequency, and if memory serves, it's capacitive coupling is rather low too, so it should give a nice full bass as well.

Second reason is that many electrical cables are unshielded wrt em interference, which manifests itself as NOISE. That's why you plug your computer and monitor into a power bar, which filters some of that nasty stuff out.

This all relates back to the fact that power cable is designed to carry, well, household electricity, which runs at 60Hz (or 50Hz in places like Europe). It kills the frequencies above about 200Hz, so that any really high frequency noise is already partially killed before it gets to anything important. A lot of music is at frequencies an octave above that, as is speach.

[aerius]

14ga Romex housewire actually has pretty decent electrical properties, the LCR values are good enough that it won't affect the audio band unless you're doing really long runs. There might be something like a 0.5dB roll-off at 20kHz, but chances are only 1 in a 100 people will ever notice that, and only with really good audio gear.

But as Braedley mentioned, interferance can be a problem with Romex, it has no shielding and it wasn't made for noise rejection, if there's noise, it'll pick it up. It's not too bad since you're looking at pretty low impedances and high signal levels in the amplifier to speaker interface, but it's still possible.


Speaking of power bars, I've popped a few apart and wouldn't trust them for shit. The surge protection is a varistor from hot to neutral and the "filter" is a couple dinky capacitors from hot & neutral to ground. Not surprisingly, I've had electronics fried even when they were plugged into power bars with "surge protection & filtering". I wised up, and picked up a bunch of ONEAC medical power conditioners from the local surplus shop. Hospitals use them to keep life support machines from getting fried, now I use them to keep my electronics safe. They have a heavy isolation transformer and lots of filtering, power spikes & noise don't make it through.

[phongn]

I would go with aerius' suggestion. Cat 6 is designed for high frequency, and if memory serves, it's capacitive coupling is rather low too, so it should give a nice full bass as well.

Meh. There is absolutely no need for CAT6's 250MHz of bandwidth. It is cheap, however.

Second reason is that many electrical cables are unshielded wrt em interference, which manifests itself as NOISE. That's why you plug your computer and monitor into a power bar, which filters some of that nasty stuff out.

Shielded speaker cabling is useless. If you really need noise rejection one should go balanced throughout the entire chain (i.e. XLR). As far as noise, switch-mode power supplies are quite tolerant of it.

This all relates back to the fact that power cable is designed to carry, well, household electricity, which runs at 60Hz (or 50Hz in places like Europe). It kills the frequencies above about 200Hz, so that any really high frequency noise is already partially killed before it gets to anything important. A lot of music is at frequencies an octave above that, as is speach.

There's not really a difference between standard power cabling and speaker cable - it's just copper, really. Various speaker companies (high-end ones, at that) used to be infamous about using lamp cord instead of high-end, expensive speaker cabling ... and it works fine.

Speaking of power bars, I've popped a few apart and wouldn't trust them for shit. The surge protection is a varistor from hot to neutral and the "filter" is a couple dinky capacitors from hot & neutral to ground. Not surprisingly, I've had electronics fried even when they were plugged into power bars with "surge protection & filtering". I wised up, and picked up a bunch of ONEAC medical power conditioners from the local surplus shop. Hospitals use them to keep life support machines from getting fried, now I use them to keep my electronics safe. They have a heavy isolation transformer and lots of filtering, power spikes & noise don't make it through.

Ideally one would buy or rent one of those "whole-house" surge protectors and simply dump all that excess energy to ground. There are also companies like Brickwall that sell MOV-less surge protectors.

[aerius]

Meh. There is absolutely no need for CAT6's 250MHz of bandwidth. It is cheap, however.

Nothing succeeds like complete overkill. Plus all the Cat6 I've run across to date uses Teflon insulation, which is pretty much the best stuff available.

There's not really a difference between standard power cabling and speaker cable - it's just copper, really. Various speaker companies (high-end ones, at that) used to be infamous about using lamp cord instead of high-end, expensive speaker cabling ... and it works fine.

High-end cable companies are funny, they source some generic wire from China, shrink-wrap it a few times to make it nice & stiff, then put a fancy jacket on it and mark the price up about 200 times. One of the best scams ever.

[Chris OFarrell]

I would go with aerius' suggestion. Cat 6 is designed for high frequency, and if memory serves, it's capacitive coupling is rather low too, so it should give a nice full bass as well.

Meh. There is absolutely no need for CAT6's 250MHz of bandwidth. It is cheap, however.

Well that depends how crazy you are.

A friend of a friend who works for CISCO actualy reconfigured a switch into which he patched 5 speaker channels behind his audio kit as part of his home network, then using the crapload of cables he had running under his floor and placing the speakers wherever he wanted.

Sounded awesome I have to say...but uber geeky.

[phongn]

Nothing succeeds like complete overkill. Plus all the Cat6 I've run across to date uses Teflon insulation, which is pretty much the best stuff available.

CAT6's requirements are pretty stringent - but you should check out CAT7, which in some configurations (not GG45-terminated) will be shielded.

High-end cable companies are funny, they source some generic wire from China, shrink-wrap it a few times to make it nice & stiff, then put a fancy jacket on it and mark the price up about 200 times. One of the best scams ever.

There are also those weird MIT cables that have those inline R/C networks

[aerius]

CAT6's requirements are pretty stringent - but you should check out CAT7, which in some configurations (not GG45-terminated) will be shielded.

I can't even get Cat7 around here unless I order it in 1000' spools direct from the manufacturer or distributors. The only time I've ever seen Cat7 was in the inside of some network cable company's service van.