Speaker Cables For Your Surround Sound
By Andy Dansby
A note about Premium cables. When you are buying a surround sound system, be wary of snake oil sales people trying you sell you a monster of a cable. They will give you all kinds of facts and specifications about the fancy cable and its fancy price. It was gas injected and braided by the purest copper. It might have a higher range of frequencies that the human ear cannot possibly perceive. The ends are made out of gold, platinum or some other rare metal. It is outrageous and many people fall to this ploy. The cables are outrageously expensive! Just say no thank you to the sales person and walk away.
The monsters of the cable industry are doing one thing and one thing only, making a huge profit from people wanting their surround sound to sound the best and their inexperience with cables.
A little common sense is needed. First a well known saying comes into play, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If you bought a poor sounding surround sound system and poor sounding speakers, the best cables in the world will not do one thing for you other than empty your wallet. Another common saying is "let the buyer beware".
First lets have a general description of cables. There is a connector end, sometimes it has an interface such as a Banana, a RCA connector, a Coax connector or another type. There is sometimes a boot that covers the connection between the connector end and the actual wire. There is the wire itself, either solid or stranded. There is the wire insulation. Finally, there is the layout of the cable and how the various strands interact with each other.
The connector end. There are a variety of connectors from RCA, Coax, Banana. As for any connector Gold is king. The best connectors are gold plated. If you have standard speaker wire, there is no connector, just bare copper, ignore the gold, I do not think that there is anything on the market that is a gold covered copper bare end, but you never know. A quick note about gold connectors. Gold is widely recognized as the best conductor for power and is least likely to corrode, it's usually a thin plated layer covering over another metal, usually nickel.
Boot. The boot is rubber, plastic or metal cover that covers the connector end connection to the cable. It serves two purposes, first it hold the connection solid so that it does not break. The second is aesthetics. If you have standard speaker wire, there is no boot, just bare copper.
Wire and gauge. The wire carries the signal from one device to the next. gauge is the thickness of the wire. For the most thicker is better, which means a lower number. A 12 gauge wire is thicker than a 14 gauge wire. You may see on the packing an acronym AWG, this stands for American Wire gauge, again the lower the number, the thicker the wire.
Insulation. The covering on top of the bare copper. With standard speaker wires, the better cables are well marked for the positive and negative terminals.
Shielding. Usually a metal foil that covers each individual wire to prevent it from receiving interference from another individual wire. Also shielding sometimes can be also covering all wires as a bundle, to prevent it from receiving interference from outside sources.
Lets cover each type of wire separately.
Standard speaker wire. Standard speaker wire usually comes on reels and has no connector end, just bare copper. The bare copper will then fit into a clip or screw terminals. If you have a choice between buying the cable on a reel versus a coiled bundle, choose the reel. Always buy more cable than you think you need. What to look for:
The first and foremost thing to look at is the gauge of the wire. The lower gauge wires (meaning the thicker wire), will be better than the thinner gauge wires. Next, see if you can find on the packaging, the metal used for the wire. It should be pure copper and not a copper mix. I have also seen a fiber/copper mix on certain wires as well as a copper/tin mix. Stay with copper.
Next, look at the insulation covering the wire, is it well marked or do you need a magnifying glass to see the markings for positive and negative.
Next, check to see if the wire is stranded or solid. Solid wire are a solid piece of copper for each conductor, while stranded cables are many smaller strands of wire twisted together to form what appears to be a solid wire. I prefer stranded cables, they are more flexible and stand up to metal fatigue (metal breaking after moving it around too much.)
Finally, Stay Away From The High End Cables.
Connector end speaker wires. Connector end speaker wires (banana or spade lugs) follow the same rules as standard speaker wire. Usually a connector end speaker wire does not come on reels and you have to make sure that you have enough length before you buy. Do this with careful measurement of the path you are going to run and then add ten feet to the overall length. What to look for:
As with the standard speaker wire, check for gauge, metal used for the wire and insulation. Next, check how the connector is attached to the wire, it is crimped or soldered. I prefer wire that has been soldered, though a good crimp is fine, crimps can become suspect is poorly made or wiggled too much which causes metal fatigue.
Though not as important, make sure that the boot (the plastic or rubber covering over the solder or crimp) is color coded, it will help with your connection in dark places..
Next, make sure that the connector end is gold. Gold is the best conductor and does not oxidize. Finally, Stay Away From The High End Cables.
Shielding. Interference can wreck havoc on your audio experience. Cable can and will act as an antenna picking up stray electrical signals, producing a noticeable hum on your speakers. This is caused by running a speaker cable too close to electrically noisy devices such as a Fluorescent light, running parallel to electrical cable microwaves or other noise generating devices. It's difficult to spot all devices that will cause this. A tool used by telephone technicians to identify possible interference is an inductive amplifier also called a wand. This is a tool with a speaker at the end that will pick up interference and play it over the speaker. If you take the tool and place it near a Fluorescent light, you will hear a distinct buzz, cable will pick up this buzz and amplify it over a speaker. This is called inductance, avoid it at all cost. If you cannot then you need to have shielded speaker wire. If you can avoid it then standard speaker cable will suffice. Shield speaker cable always costs considerable more than non shielded.
A tip for measuring cable length. I have seen more than a few people make the mistake of buying too short a cable. If you are going to be concealing the cable by running it in the attic or basement or along the baseboard, be sure to make measurements of every length and then add an additional ten feet to the overall length. There is nothing as frustrating as being one foot too short. There is no magic cable stretcher.
Comments