What is the best wire gauge to use for hooking up speakers to a home theater receiver?

by wallyg

I have a RCA RT2380 home theater receiver that I have recovered from storage. I have found very few wires to hook up all the speakers. I want to buy some wire but I want to know what the best gauge is. I’m thinking to go with 12 or 14 gauge wire. What do you reckon?

Wire I’m plotting on export: http://www.buy.com/prod/pyramid-12-gauge-50-ft-spool-of-high-quality-speaker-zip-wire/q/loc/111/208073110.html

Answer by Maniac
Since you didn’t give us your length requirements or your speaker impedance it’s impossible to say for certain but for most home theatre applications either 14 or 12 ga will work fine. I will attach a link below with a table you can use to determine for certain what you need.

Answer by Cody
honestly i would get the 14 gauge. haha but ill tell you this:

I bought what i thought would be PERFECT for my entire setup.

jetblack
12 gauge
lamp wire. it fit Impeccably in the amp. looked incredible etc…. but it did not fit in the speakers…..i was mega pissed……

so now i use 14 Gauge

Answer by bluedragon
Lower the gauge the better.. Since you gave two options go with the 12 gauge. But to be honest your system is not very high power so just get the less expensive gauge you can find.

Answer by comixguru
I would recommend anything 16 gauge and under with that RCA Home Theater. The product you linked to at buy.com seems reasonably priced, go for it.

You can also try Monoprice for speaker cable.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10239

If you need something straight away, 12 or 14 gauge lamp cord can be bought by the foot at most hardware stores like Home Depot and is reasonable. It is not as cheap as Monoprice is though.

Answer by UnknownX
It depends on how long the wires are, as well as the Ohms of the speakers. The longer the wire, the thicker the gauge. Once you hit over 30 feet, you’ll be looking at 12 gauge.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

NYC – East Village: Hamilton-Holly House


Image by wallyg
The large town house at 4 St. Mark's House, also renowned as the Hamilton-Holly House, was constructed in 1831 in the Federal style. Built by speculation, as was the entire block, by Thomas E. Davis, it was sold to Col. Alexander Hamilton, son of the late Secretary of Treasury in 1833. For the next nine being, he and his wife, Eliza, his sister, Eliza Hamilton Holly, and her husband, Sidney, and his mother, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, the senior Hamilton’s widow called this home.

Actress-administrator Julie Bovasso established and directed the 132-seat Tempo Arena here in 1955, everywhere she is credited with the American premieres of works by Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, and Michel de Ghelderode. In 1957, the front part of the first tale opened as the Pyramid Gallery. The theater was renowned in 1958 as the Pyramid Theater. In 1959, the Key Theater was established here by Nils L. Cruz and Robert E. Judge. By 1961, the building housed three sculptors' studios.

From 1961-67, it was owned by Theodora Colt Flynn Bergery, a descendant of the Rhode Island arm of the Colt family, related to Samuel Colt, inventor of the Colt revolver. Bergery bought this building to produce The Children's Circus, which debuted in December 1961 and ran for two winters. She later re-named it the Bowery Theater. In June, it became The Howff. In 1964, it became the New Bowery Theater, showing ahead of schedule avant-garde "underground" films by the Film-Makers' Cooperative under Jonas Mekas, then film critic of The Village Voice and editor-publisher of Film Culture. The theater was raided, with police seizing Jack Smith's allegedly "obscene" film, Flaming Creatures and arresting Mekas. He was again arrested for showing Genet's Un Chant d'Amour..

In 1965-66, it was the house of the Bridge Theater and art gallery. One of the theater's specialties was experimental plays. It was also a significant downtown venue for contemporary dance, in a program called Dance at the Bridge. Underground films continued being shown here, as the downtown venue of the midtown Film-Maker's Cinematheque. Unconventional music was featured here as well, including Yoko Ono and The Fugs, in a series of midnight shows in 1965. In April 1966, the theater was charged with "immoral, indecent" acts "against the public welfare" when an American flag was burned in LBJ, an anti-Vietnam War skit. A committee of artists and writers, headed by poet Allen Ginsberg, denounced the charges, which were eventually dropped, but the building's use as a theater finished. Since 1980, Trash & Vaudeville, a glam clothing store, has occupied the entire basement and first-tale commercial spaces. The upper tales are residential.

No. 4 St. Mark's House characterized by its unusual 26-foot width and 3½ -tale height, Flemish bond brickwork, high stoop, long parlor floor windows, Gibbs surround lobby with triple keystone and vermiculated blocks, white marble base with openings also with Gibbs surrounds, molded pediment lintels, peaked roof, and double segmental dormers. Despite the loss of some architectural details, the Hamilton-Holly House is among the rare surviving and significantly intact large Manhattan town houses of the Federal style period, and 3½ -tale, dormered peaked-roof type.

I am looking to take my sub box out of my car and into my house to use for my home theatre. I do not like the carpeted box look inside and want to avoid building an entire new box. I was thinking about staining some wood and attaching it like a shell over the unfilled box. I was also thinking I will make grills to take in the speakers as well. I would appreciate any suggestions on this matter. I dont know if this is even possible or not so delight give me your opinion. I would also like to tell everyone that I was shocked at how well my subs sounded in my house. I bought a 30amp ac to dc inverter from pyramid for $ 75 and hooked it all up and was pretty impressed. My car subs are dual JL 12′s running on an 1100 directed d amp and were just sitting in the garage collecting dust so I figured I would give this a try. One day I want to take the time to build a box from scratch but for now I just want it to look excellent enough to keep my wife from killing me. She gets very annoyed with all the speaker stuff.
Thanks!

Answer by AVDADDY
Your car sub was designed for a car, not home theater. You would be asking your sub to serve an area at least 10 times larger than it was designed for. Terrible thought.

Answer by Carlton your doorman
Generally car audio speakers don’t signal very excellent when they are connected to a home stereo, usually too boomy. It’s not a matter of the larger space – two 12″ woofers will fill a rather large space – it’s just that their design concept is rather crude, a huge, loud boom and that’s about it. There is nothing smooth and refined about them. – But if you tried it and liked it, I won’t argue. What you are talking about is plate. It’s available either as real wood or wood grain vinyl. I get sheets of plate from this house:
http://www.cabinetparts.com/g/walnut-flat-cut-plate-flexible-materials/
Sometimes the huge box stores like Home Depot will sell plate but I’ve only seen oak there.
Partsexpress.com sells wood grain vinyl. They may sell real wood plate too, I haven’t looked in a while. They sell all kinds of other audio doo-dads too. A few words of advice; if I were you and this car boom box does indeed signal decent inside you might consider making it signal more decent -ie. less boomy. Your wife might appreciate that too. Make sure there is some damping material inside the cabinet. This is usually sheets of poly fluff or if it is a completely closed box, poly fluff stuffing, the same stuff that they sell in fabric shops for stuffing pillows. Also, by a car amplifier isn’t the best route to take. You might consider getting a real, quality power amplifier for use inside. eBay is loaded with them. You’d be surprised how huge a difference a excellent, class A amplifier can make to tighten up the bottom end. I’d advise you to read up on speaker building so you can better know how to modify the coarseness out of this thing. The Partsexpress site has a primer if I’m not mistaken but there is all kinds of information on speaker building all over the net. Again, your wife will most liable appreciate this.

Answer by James
You need a impeccably smooth surface to apply plate, so that could be a really huge and hard job. Seems like a lot of distress to go to, given the superior routine, convenience and versatility of powered home theatre sub-woofers.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
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Read more on NPR

Pyramid 2022SX 200 Watts 3Way Mini Box Speaker System

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Video Rating: 5 / 5