What Gauge of Speaker Wire??

[Tru2theBlu]

I just purchased the monitor 60's, and was wondering if I should get 14 or 12 Gauge speaker wire? Will there be a difference? Any help appreciated.

[Mr. HiDef]

Originally Posted by Tru2theBlu

I just purchased the monitor 60's, and was wondering if I should get 14 or 12 Gauge speaker wire? Will there be a difference? Any help appreciated.

I always use 12g speaker wire but there shouldnt be much of a difference between 12 and 14 gauge

[brett_day]

well in all honesty unless your runs are going to be over 40ft then 16 gauge will suffice. Signal degradation only occurs at around 40ft which would then require a thicker gauge of wire

[poogie]

Originally Posted by brett_day

well in all honesty unless your runs are going to be over 40ft then 16 gauge will suffice. Signal degradation only occurs at around 40ft which would then require a thicker gauge of wire

Is there any scientific test conducted to prove that anything around more than 40ft will have signal degradation? Reason I ask, I'm planning to re-route my speaker cables thru the attic to conceal it. Thanks.

[Blu-Dog]

Originally Posted by poogie

Is there any scientific test conducted to prove that anything around more than 40ft will have signal degradation? Reason I ask, I'm planning to re-route my speaker cables thru the attic to conceal it. Thanks.

You get "signal attenuation", which is a fancy term for the signal gets weaker over longer distance. It happens with all conductors, but the narrower the guage, the more it happens.

It's just resistance, really. "Better quality" wire helps - more strands in the wire is good, so a 14 guage wire with lots of strands may be better on long runs than 12 guage with fewer strands.

If your run is not going to be ridiculously long, use quality 12 guage for safety, 14 guage is fine too, 16 guage only if the run is under 50 feet. It just takes more power to push the signal through a smaller wire, and resistance also cuts into high frequency tones - you may lose some data at the high end, but it's probably inaudible anyway.

Shouldn't be a real problem for you.

[tbizzle]

It's generally recommended to get 14 or even 16 gauge for the average speaker setup, but 12 gauge is good (especially if you're running the wire more than 20 or 30 ft.) I actually had 16 because that's all that I could find at my local Best Buy and Home Depot, but I just bought a roll of 12 gauge from monoprice.com and I'm going to use this when I get my new speaker setup.

[Tru2theBlu]

Thank you guys. I was thinking that I would get the 14, and that seems to be the average between the three of you. So sounds good. Yea I am only running the wire about 12 ft.