Don’t break the bank on costly speaker wire
Q. I just purchased a Pioneer Elite TX-MS09 speaker set, with six speakers and a center channel.
The maximum wire run will be 35 feet, and I need about 180 feet total.
What should I buy for speaker cables?
A. All you need is speaker wire with enough thickness for the speakers’ impedance (given in ohms) and the length of the run.
In your case you have 8-ohm speakers, and 16gauge speaker wire is adequate because it is good for runs up to 48 feet.
A handy chart at rogerrussell.com/wire/wire
.htm is a great reference for determining what wire is required.
A 100-foot spool of 16gauge speaker wire runs about $12 online, so $24 will get you all the wire you need.
Use a wire stripper to expose the bare wire cleanly, and adding banana plugs will make connecting everything easier.
I recommend Mediabridge banana plugs, which are beautifully crafted and easy to set up. That will add another $30 or so to the total, but banana plugs are optional, not required.
I used to get wire questions very often. There is a lot of marketing hype about fancy speaker wire and connection cables, and it is all snake oil.
You can spend several thousands of dollars per meter on speaker wire, but it has been proven time and time again that it does not improve sound quality.
There are some benefits to higher quality speaker wire or custommade speaker cables, though sound quality is not one of them.
What you get with pricier cables is better looks, better reliability from the custom-terminated connections, and it is easier to connect the components.
If you are spending a lot on a system, I can understand wanting something a little better looking than plain wire to connect it all together.
If that is you, check out Sound-Path accessories from SVS.
They make an excellent product, price it fairly and market it honestly. svsound.com/pages/ soundpath Panasonic Countertop Induction Oven: One of the neatest things I saw at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show was a unique appliance from Panasonic.
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