Audio Cable question

[az]

I was thinking to get some no-name cables between 13 and 14 gauge.

AZ

[K6-III]

The amount you spend on your cables should be no more than 10% of your entire system...

[az]

I will NEVER spend a few hundred Euros on my cables

I've just seen 20m of 13-14 gauge cable for 1 euro on ebay

AZ

[agallag]

I'm using some 16-gauge lamp wire to connect my B&W 601 speakers, and they sound FANTASTIC. Easily as good as they sounded in the store with expensive cable. It also only costs about $1 more to bi-wire them, which in my opinion makes more of a difference than expensive cables ever would. 13-14 gauge wouldn't make much difference, but if you found some cheap, go for it.

[az]

20 meters for one euro doesn't sound all too expensive to me

AZ

[mutz]

...interesting... nobody mentioned what counts for speakers.

- copper quality for conductivity
- strand count, or otherwise put, finer strands for frequency & transients
- insulation quality for protection and moisture (corrosion) resistance

For 10 m, good lamp cable will do fine. There is loss over long distances at high wattage, that's why most speaker systems today are active.

My JBL cinema system has relatively small, high qualitycable with phase-keyed connectors. On the stereo I have lamp cord size speaker cable with transparent insulation and a red phase stripe. It's all much more than adequate.

A lousy cable, small or fat, is still lousy. If you are wiring a disco, you might want something thicker in a good quality. If you are wiring a rock concert with thousand watt amps and monster insturment speakers, better go for the professional big stuff.

Otherwise, you are just spending money to impress yourself.