what is the best 16 gage speaker wire for home theater and rca jack for a subwoofer?

Answer 1

You can use 16 ga for short runs, but longer runs 12 ga is usually recommended.

Look for oxygen free speaker wire to reduce oxidization.

Budget 10% of the speakers + receiver cost for the wires and do not go over this limit.

PartsExpress sells decent stuff for budget prices.

SUBWOOFER: Any long RCA cable will work well for a subwoofer. Just make sure the RCA plugs fit snug.

Answer 2

Hi,
Please don't waste your money on high quality speaker wire or high quality RCA cable. There is no such thing when it comes to audio. But for video, the type of cable you use does matter in terms of picture quality. It has to do with how much data a cable has to carry, for video a cable has to carry a lot of data but for sound its not that much data.
So use any cheap 16 gage wire and any RCA cable you can find for a reasonable price. For speaker wire, it is the gage that matters, not the price.
Good luck!

Answer 3

They are all the same... anyone who says they can hear the difference between cheap wire and an expensive wire is lying to your face. 16 gauge wire will be fine as long as you are not running over 100 feet. The wire for the rca jack can be as small as 22 gauge if you have a powered sub-woofer. The rca cable doesn't carry a powered signal, it simply supplies the signal to the sub amplifier.

Answer 4

KimberCable makes really expesive speaker wire and it looks really cool. Tributaries makes excellent interconnects, which also look really cool.

CAVEAT: Unless you spent an enormous amount of money on your other equipment and your room acoustics, you won't hear the difference. What's enormous? Say, at least 50k as a rough estimate. If you have typical equipment the only one that will be able to hear the difference is Mr. Oscilloscope.

Conventional thinking suggests low oxygen content minimizes oxydation and more strands is better than less strands for speaker wire. Look for quality connectors on interconnects and make sure they're shielded cables. This won't cost you much extra and these features are available from almost all manufacturers.

Answer 5

Standard gauge for speaker wire - Home theater is 14 (less than 100ft long) while 12 (longer than 100ft long) 16 is too thin, might affect your sound quality.

If your AV receiver has this LF for sub, use a coaxial cable RG58 (75ohms) and quality RCA on both end.

If not, try the gauge 12 for your sub.

Answer 6

16 gage wire is pretty much the same no matter who you buy from. DO NOT purchase anything from Monster cable. They do not indicate the gage wire they use and are tremendously overpriced! Pretty color insulation and fancy packaging doesn't improve quality. I use http://mycablemart.com. The quality is good, resonability priced and shipping is quick. You should be able to find what you need there.