Heck you could use platinum wire or the ultimate....mercury filled glass tubes...however the twisting part with those could be a bit tricky if not dangerous!

For me, wire isn't where I put the money...THHN stranded is often just fine. The official speaker wires from the various cable manufacturers tend to have a higher strand count.

In response to Mr. Walsh's comments on fitting the ends of larger cables into the speaker or amps...

What is it with the speaker/amp industry? It is like a conspiracy to ensure anything larger than 12awg just won't fit! The push terminals used by JBL and others just won't take larger than 12awg and they barely take that and can often pull out. On the amplifier end...the 5-way binding post is also a 12awg device though some bannana plugs made specifically for speaker use can go down to 8awg. In recent years we had the wonderful connector introduced by Neutrik called the SPEAKON (as in speaker connector)...it is a quick disconnect, can't shock yourself connector that locks in. It's rated wire gauge is approximately 13awg (though 12awg can fit)...Even many amplifier barrier strips flip you the bird at the magical 12awg limit. Ever tried using 10awg on them (eg QSC)? I often divide up the strands so an equal amount goes on either side of the screw when dealing with 10awg. Either that or use crimp terminals (more often than not). Nowadays, speakers and amps should be taking 8awg wire with no problem and should even consider 6awg as a safety margin. We have amplifiers that can put out 30+ amps of juice per side it only makes sense that wire that can handle that power should be able to fit.

Steve

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Last year my tech ran across a company that makes a wire bundle for movie theatres. They ran 8 twisted pair for the run behind the screen and then single twisted pair for the surrounds. You could spec the gauge you wanted for each run and each pair were a different color for easy channel identification.

Bobby Pinkston thinks it was done by an electrician in Dallas named Ed Davis.

They used standard electrical wire because it is vastly cheaper than Belden wire. Electrical inspectors don’t like Belden wire because it doesn’t have the UL listings in the jacket but you have to look it up in a book. Regular electrical wire has the UL information written right on the wire itself.

I'll ask my tech what company that was when he is available.

Not so.

I have spent and wasted many hours testing speaker wire. There is no question that the wrong wire can have a negative impact on sound quality. Excessive resistance, capacitance or reactance can all reduce the quality of the amplifier/speaker connection -- which should be the best possible. However, one does not need expensive and fancy wire with big claims to get the job done quite well.

The HPS-4000® specification for speaker wire is simply that the round trip resistance should not exceed 1/4 ohm. This means that were I to use #10 AWG THHN wire, the largest theatre where I would use that size wire would be around 50 feet long. This assumes a 50 foot long theatre would require perhaps a 125 foot long screen-speaker wire run.

Beyond that, I also specify the use of (typically) 10-3 solid round Romex wire for the screen speakers. This provides three #10 conductors plus a fourth for bond. These four conductors are twisted in the round jacket. By shorting the two opposing wires at each end, inductance is canceled, and we also get the resistance of a #7 AWG wire -- good enough for theatres up to around 175 feet in length.

It took me a while to become convinced of the efficacy of this approach. I was first shown graphs of the high frequency losses encountered with long runs of stranded wire. The losses looked alarming. However, a treble adjustment would correct for this and we really wouldn't be aware of the HF loss unless we actually measured it. So I measured it.

My client in Hawaii insisted that we should try the Romex approach on a new theatre (the Kahala #1). We had previously used twisted #6 THHN at the Waikiki #3 along with the same speaker systems that were going into the Kahala. When we measured the frequency response at the beginning and the end of each type of wire, we found that there was a high frequency loss at the end of the THHN, where 20 kHz was down -5 dB, while the Romex was essentially flat.

Since the Romex is less expensive and comes twisted, there was no reason not to use it from then on. Over time, I began to also hear a slight difference between the sound systems using the solid Romex wire and those using twisted THHN. The Romex houses sounded slightly smoother, though no one could ever walk into a theatre and know which wire was used.

There have been one or two occasions where local electrical inspectors were uncomfortable with the use of Romex for low voltage applications. Though not strictly illegal, they believed that the was too great a possibility that someone would actually put line voltage on the speaker wires. In such cases, we revert to #8 or #6 THHN.

For surround systems, we use #14-2 twisted and stranded copper wire. It can be the least expensive #14-2 copper wire available. Indeed, zip cord would be fine. However, one can often find #14-2 speaker wire that is relatively inexpensive and marked for polarity as well.

For "hard to solder" things, Kester makes a special solder with an "active" flux, and it really does make a difference. The flux is called 331. It is a little more expensive than "normal" solder, but not much. (No, this is not acid core solder, DO NOT use acid core on electronics).

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Oh, and tinning has nothing to do with oxygen-free cables but rather surface oxidation. As someone pointed out, add some "fresh" solder and it will bond just fine. The new EPA-friendly solder formulas are "lead-free" and suck. I keep several spools of the good ol' lead-type around just for such cases to repair older equipment. (GOD! I love the smell of rosin-core (5-core), 60/40 solder in the morning....)

I love the "directional-aligned" conductor type of audio cables. I mean, as we *ALL* know, audio is DC. And, the current flows ONLY in one direction, so that those cables will definately be worth mega-bucks. (OH GOD! Save me! I'm not worthy of you.)

I've not seen nickel-plated or nickel-composite wire other than nichromium that's used for heating elements. Silver-plated wire is used with teflon insulated wire. Free-air current ratings for single conductor and cables in electronic equipment and aircraft is usually higher than NEC because of the insulation is allowed to operate at higher temperatures.

It is VERY important to twist conductors correctly so as not to damage the conductors as Paul mentioned.

Also, I doubt that mercury would be a very good conductor, especially as compared to Gold, Silver, Copper, Aluminum, etc.

And John, I read with interest your post about the 10/3 w/ground Romex cable. I'm surprised at the results especially with certain amplifiers (like the POS Crown amps)that do not like certain types of loads. Romex 3-conductor with ground is NOT formed in a twisted-conductor fashion, but rather wound in a spiral with all conductors parallel to each other.

>>> Phil

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As an example, 1.4mhz will laugh and almost completely ignore a 12 gauge grounding wire. We have to use copper strap 4 inches wide to
provide the RF grounding needed to keep our transmitter RF out of the audio chain.