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Wire gauge is based on amperage. If the world was to rewire everything according to audiophile world, we would simply be out of copper.
I hear ya Fred. Another view I have in place of the teeny-tiny hookup wire in the speakers is the size and banality of the resistor and cap leads these huge wires feed. I assure you these leads are not made of 6N OFC and can't be any larger than 26gauge.
The fact some people like larger gauge wire for speaker cables and power cables is explained by the fact the lower the impedance, the faster the slew rate. For people with high power amplifiers and inefficient speakers, it makes sense to me that the best cable for the purpose is going to be sized for peak currents rather than average currents, not only that, but there must be some added capacity to allow for the fastest slew rate possible. So, if you have an amp that puts out 1600 watt peaks, you have 14.14 amps at that peak, which would normally require a 14g wire, but if you double that to reduce the cable's impedance you now have an 8g wire, which is certainly very common, and I don't think it's overkill. If you calculate the same using RMS power, say if it's 400W, that would only require a 19g wire, which isn't enough for an amp that size IMO. So it's not as simple as calculating for wire you'd use for an electrical service in your house...
This post has co-mingled several facts and mis-conceptions! a] Wire and cable end to end impedance or resistance has nothing to do with "slew rate". Slew rate is an amplifier thing.b] 14 AWG wire is rated at 15 Amps continuous! Continuous in the case is 3 hours steady state. Nothing like an audio amplifier's almost instantaneous peaks.The peak current for a 14 AWG wire is 166 Amps or more.c] If you double 14 AWG wire , you have an 11 AWG equivalent.
Dave, you're co-mingling again.From [a]True:Slew rate is used to measure the rate of change of voltage an amplifier can produce but it can also be applied to currentSlew rate is simply the instantaneous rate of change of voltage or current.False:a cable with a lower impedance will accomplish this better than a cable with higher impedance. Not true:this explains why MANY, MANY people find larger gauge power cords to sound better on amplifiers.For music signals, we want it {slew rate} to be as fast as possible,
Oh no! Now we have yet another variable to consider: our individual aging issues. ﴾͡๏̯͡๏﴿Gotta go lie down now. Time for my nap. t(ツ)_/¯
Yeah, funny how at least half of all audiophiles must be hypnotized to hear a wire difference, and the other half so certain no such difference could possible exist.Sort of like when The Pope would proclaim the Earth was flat i guess.... LOL.
The earth is not FLAT??? When did THAT happen?
I'm talking about the slew rate within the audio bandwidth, not high end frequency response. And I'm talking about the current slew rate that may be different between cables with different resistances, namely that a larger gauge cable can deliver current more quickly than a smaller gauge cable, especially when we are talking about very high power peaks produced by powerful amplifiers. In this situation I am saying that a gauge of cable that equals what you'd normally use for an average current value isn't going to be sufficient and it's better to size your speaker cable for the MAXIMUM power your amp can produce rather than it's RMS rating. In my previous example the difference was 19g vs 14g wire, I'm not sure too many people here would agree than a 19g wire is appropriate for a 400W RMS amp that can produce 1kW+ peaks... Also, the R you add in a speaker cable is purely resistant assuming the same geometry, etc), it's in series with the speaker driver's impedance and isn't going to have a huge effect on the driver assuming you're not using extremely undersized wire. Most speaker cables are going to come in at a small fraction of an ohm for R.
Dave,Will the whole system still have the benefit of the larger, lower R cable (i.e. current capability) when the cabling is not continued into the speaker via hookup wire, component leads and voicecoil wire? I would think the benefits you mention would only apply in test situations where the cable alone is tested. Wouldn't the speaker system then bottleneck the current flow and cancel out the benefits of large cables? What comes to mind is a stretch of 10 lane super-highway (cabling) that then drops down to a 2 lane road (speaker system) just a few miles before your destination (cone). The capabilities of the 10 lane highway would then be moot due to the limitations of the bottle-necking 2 lane.
The reason we want low resistance speaker cables, is because the cable and the speaker act as a series voltage divider circuit. The speaker's resistance (impedance) varies a lot with frequency, so a high resistance cable will mess up the speaker's frequency response in strange ways.
