John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

What difference does the gauge of wiring make? i've seen between 12 and 16 gauge and i was just wondering if there's a noticable difference?

Generally not as much as it might seem; speaker impedance is 'way larger than the small resistance of even 16 gauge wire. Check for yourself -

http://www.cirris.com/testing/resistance/wire.html

Between 10 foot leads of 12 ga and 16 ga wire, (20 ft round trip) you see a difference of about 0.05 ohms - compared to a nominal speaker impedance of 6 to 8 ohms, it's really not enough to count.

That being said, I once did a test where I listened to the same CD, same speakers, same location, same everyting except 16 ga wire vs. 10 ga. wire, and I swore I could hear a marked difference - the larger wire sounded more punchy and cleaner highs to my ears. Thomas claims I was getting a placebo effect, and it's possible - there was too much time between tests to rule that out. Still, seemed very real to me. I never went back and set it up with a/b switching so I can't say now if it was real or just wanting to believe... Steve

Don't forrget it is a 14 gauge in the wall, So where is the purpose?

You wanna have some headroom? Make new wiring from your main pannel, take a 006 gauge wire in some special ac outlet, guess what? nothing is happening! no difference why? most of the poweramps have 14 or 16 gauge ac power cable

If your speakers are passive xover, most of them have 16 to 20 gauge. SO WHERE IS THE BENEFIT?

Same as all the exotic cables ! Do you think that the studios have all the $1000 per foot cable interconnect!

Hype, only hype!

The significant impact of the wire thickness would be in the speaker damping if it is high to begin with. That affects the "punchiness" etc.

Andre

AVare wrote:The significant impact of the wire thickness would be in the speaker damping if it is high to begin with. That affects the "punchiness" etc.

Andre

I know that.

We should not use a smaller gauge then 16, 14 would be preferable. The point is just not to be overkill about it.

Bigger wire size provides more control on speaker cone. But we should not forget that if you have a passive Xover with 16 gauge for the lo-pass filter in a two-tree way system, then you use a 10 gauge from the amp to the speaker cabinet, gain in dampnig factor is mostly useless.

In an active x-over amplification, wire gauge is more significant IMHO.

Serge:

My post was intended to claify things for Chipy569, not the rest of us trying to answer his question.

Andre

OK!

AVare wrote:Serge:

My post was intended to claify things for Chipy569, not the rest of us trying to answer his question.

Andre

Xcuse me!

True but my explanation was targetted to the first post, then my detailed explanation was aimed for him.

Sorry for my bad shoot!