Good deal on speaker wire

[nataraj]

I normally get my audio / video cables from partsexpress. They have (generic ?) 16g 50' flat speaker cable for about 17$.

Link

 

[madelvis]

Just to throw down my 2 cents...I have a good friend who has over $150,000 in professional sound & lighting equipment. He has his own studio, enough equipment to support 2 bands on the road, etc. I asked him about cabling and he told me the lamp cord trick from Menards/Home Depot. That's what he uses. But if you want to go for looks, that flat stuff is nice.

That being said, I paid over $100 for what amounts to a Monster Power HTS strip for all my components. This seems to have worked, but cexasue before, everythime my mini-fridge kicked in (located next to my recliner..hehe) my speakers popped, which I'm sure wasn't doing any favors for my equipment. No more.

Joel

 

[BooneRebel]

<< Wfay: Heh.. You snuck your post in while I was replying. Audio Asylum won't even allow discussions of double blind tests because they never lead anywhere and it just ends up being a nasty flame war.

That John Reisch CAT5 cable recipe looks interesting. It also looks like an aweful lot of work. Have you heard a set?

Just to let you know on the Z560's. I have them and I'm using the lamp cord that came with the set. You can probably use this cable if you can get the wire through the teeny 5 way binding posts on the satellites and squeeze the wire into the spring clips on the sub without breaking them.

What's funny is that these speakers are meant to mimic the high end speakers with the metal phase cone on the drivers and the 5-way binding posts. Heh.. With the size of the binding posts though, you can't fit any wire of substantial size on them unless you terminate the cable with pins (worthless anyway) and I highly doubt that the phase plugs on the tiny drivers help to do anything but look cool.

The problem with the Z560's btw isn't the sats IMO. They are fine for computer speakers. The problem is the sub. I've never heard a sub that was more uncontrolled than this thing. It's just way too boomy in the mid-bass and what's tragic is that you can't turn it down low enough to keep it from getting boomy. I have my bass volume button all the way down and it's not enough. I won't use the EQ either on Winamp because it just creates noise when it's activated. I might end up doing surgery on the sub to see if I can tighten up the bass a bit. I might change the interal wiring, replace a few caps, brace up the box and put in some sound deadening material to absorb some of the standing waves.

OTOH.. I might just dump these things and get a decent set of pc speakers because it seems like too much work for what it's worth. These speakers are great if you want to piss off the neighbors, shake the walls or scare the cat, but if you want to listen to music like I do, they are completely worthless.

Sal >>



Can anyone tell me where to find more about John Reisch CAT5 cable recipe? I'm just getting into an audio setup and was wondering if I could use existing CAT5 for it...

n/m:
jon risch

 

[Mr_Happy]

You may also want to check out Chris Venhaus's recipe for cat5 speaker cables: link

 

[ChuckWits]

Salvador: It seems to me that one of the reviews I read agreed with your assessment (sp?) of the logitechs: OK for games, but not so good for serious music listening.

 

[Idex]

You can purchase DIY cables with John's recipe at www.DIYCABLE.com and no I am no affiliated with them.

 

[JahWren]

<< everythime my mini-fridge kicked in (located next to my recliner..hehe) my speakers popped, which I'm sure wasn't doing any favors for my equipment. No more.

Joel >>



Most likely you have a "loose ground" in your electrical system. Sometimes these can be hard to find and fix, but a good first start is to open up the circuit-breaker box and tighten down the screws for grounds in there. Other places to check are the ground wires on the wall sockets. Be sure not to electrocute yourself while doing this.

 

[OrlandoTiger]

Before you do anything with a wall socket its smart to kill the breaker for it first,then test it.If you decide to open up the breaker box panel just be VERY CAREFUL,I wouldnt recomend it unless you know what you are doing.You must correctly identify the leads which are grounds and those which are hot.One mistake,a slip,or touching the shaft of the screwdriver while on a hot terminal could be a FATAL exposure to 220 volts.:Q

 

[virtuamike]

<<

<< Can you use this with the logitech z560? >>



Yeppers.

I have 560zs' also, but didn't use speakerwire. Instead, I used Cat5 cable....much better than any monster wire I had lying around....and it shielded just great against all the comptuer noise.

One Cat5 to the fronts, one Cat5 to the rear. Cat5 has eight wires total, so I spliced 2 of the 26g wires to each lead....4 total leads.

Why you ask? Because I have 2 spools of Cat5, and a friend who work in advertising/music tracks recommended that I use it.


>>



Hehe, we do the same at work. Except we run our Cat5 to NAMs (speaker to NAM, receiver to NAM). Theoretically we could plug up the receiver in one office and speakers in another, dunno how it'd sound though.