do home theatre speaker wires damage easily?

Question

I just bought my first home theatre (Sony ht-ddw790) and was suprised at the way you connect the speakers to the reciever. Its a wire that sort of splits in two that you plug into the reciever by opening and closing a latch. The part of the wire that is sort of "exposed" that you plug into the reciever looks like it can be easily damaged or even broken off. What can I do if that part of the wire becomes damaged? The wires on the other end are connected to the speakers. I was expecting RCA jacks or something like that.

Can I somehow extend the wires or buy new ones?

Or am I just worrying too much?

Answer 1

It is usually the actual spring clip that is damaged more often than not, and in that case it is usually cheaper to replace than fix, depending on just what is broken. The end that goes into it is bare wire tinned with solder. You can will a solder iron and wire strippers fix that sort of damage.

For future reference there are many ways to hook up a speaker, and the industry standard for the best is a five way bind post and a spade lug. But that adds a lot of cost into a unit.

When you upgrade look at a system with a minimum of a five way bind post, it is a sign of quality, but by no means the final factor.

Since it seems you are new to Home Theater I recommend some light reading to get you along, it will help you from making costly mistakes. You may want to see about returning the system you got once you read it.

Answer 2

In my experience they do not damage easily. As long as the metal from the wire is touching the receiver, it should be fine. I'm not sure how you would go about extending one, but you can probably buy an extra wire anywhere where you could buy the speakers or any other electronics store.

Answer 3

1st, usually the wires will coincide with the position of the wires themselves (right wires will go on the right side, left wires will go on the left side). Your best bet is to follow the direction the cables are going into. If you crisscrossed them nothing damaging will happen, you might get the right speaking sounding for the left and vise versa. If you have several speakers that need to be wired this way, it will be a matter of experiementing with the connections and sounds.

Answer 4

Yes, this is just standard speaker wire, you can use any speaker wire you want to extend it or replace it. Just make sure thatyou getthe polarity correct. One wire will usually have a white dotted line or stipe this should be the positive and the plian wire is the negative.
The reason this is important is so that your speakers sound the way they should. They use diodes, and capacitors inside that look for proper polarity. You will really notice the difference it you reverse polarity on a sub woofer.

Answer 5

By the way, although his technical explanation is wrong, Randy is correct that keeping consistent polarity between your speakers is important.

Answer 6

You should not stress to much long as you don't hang your friends with them.