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New system need speaker cables - what to buy?

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nyc_hifi

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I just bought a new system and while I'm an experienced and discerning musician, I'm new to audiophile equipment. Budget is flexible. What speaker cables would you recommend, from experience? As of now, I'm considering Cardas Cygnas or Clear Reflection. Someone suggested Synergistic Research as a line to look into, speakers are cornwall IV - high efficiency and horn forward of course.

PASS Labs XP20 Preamp>PASS Labs XA30.8 Pwramp>Cornwall IV speaker

The speakers have a 4 post biwire setup, would biwire speaker vs jumpers be suggested and what speaker cable would be a good match for this system? I listen to mostly live music recordings, grateful dead, phish, etc.
 
Welcome to ASR!

Get some 14ga or 12ga wire and either stick the bare wire into the binding posts or use pretty much any old banana plug.

If you want something high quality and ready-made, order Blue Jeans cable. You don't need anything special, wire is wire as long as it's not unsuited for purpose. Speaker wire is about as simple as it gets with regards to requirements.

Bi-wiring is pointless.
 
Ok, I was considering 3k speaker cables. Are they truly that pointless to spend money on? My only reference is a pair of decent cables that I spent about 200 bucks on but are much too long for my needs at 15 feet and I feel like I should get something shorter for what I really need 5 feet each is plenty and buy something that fits with the quality of components I bought.... thats not really necessary though you feel? I don't want to spend the money if I don't need to obviously but want a high quality sound
 
nyc_hifi said:
Ok, I was considering 3k speaker cables. Are they truly that pointless to spend money on? My only reference is a pair of decent cables that I spent about 200 bucks on but are much too long for my needs at 15 feet and I feel like I should get something shorter for what I really need 5 feet each is plenty and buy something that fits with the quality of components I bought.... thats not really necessary though you feel? I don't want to spend the money if I don't need to obviously but want a high quality sound
Click to expand...
Correct. It doesn't really matter how much or little your other components cost, the cables have no impact on the sound quality as long as the impedance isn't too high and you're not introducing any issues by using inappropriate cable constructions. Both qualities can be met with any old speaker wire (or even zip line) of 14ga or better. 12ga is often recommended just to be sure, though at 5 feet even 16ga would be more than adequate.

If you want to spend more on nice looking cables, that's up to you. Just be aware you're paying for nice aesthetics and it will make no difference to the sound compared to going to your local home improvement store and getting some lamp wire off the shelf. No speaker wire, no matter how nice looking, is worth $3k though, IMO.
 
nyc_hifi said:
Are they truly that pointless to spend money on?
Click to expand...
Truly, yes.

The good/bad news is it's very hard to improve on plain old copper*. If you have a somewhat thick pure copper cable with a solid connection (14ga is plenty) you're getting all the music you paid for.

The entire high-end cable industry is based on 2 things:

1) Placebo effect - when people change something, they expect to hear an improvement, so if there is no actual change, the brain creates the improvement.

2) Oxidation on old cables - when you pull out an old cable and swap it with a new one, it really will improve the sound sometimes, but it's because the old cable was corroded / oxidized, not because the new one has some special effect on the sound.

When people hear improvements from those two things, they mistakenly assume all the marketing nonsense about the expensive cable was true.

Go for something like World's Best Cable, or anything you think looks nice that isn't too expensive, and you should be fine. Save the big bucks for speakers or amps as needed.


*This is a little similar to how even very high-end speakers are often made from humble MDF. It is far from a glamorous or exciting material, but it happens to have all the properties you want for a speaker cabinet. From a certain perspective it's unsatisfying for the best solution to be cheap and simple, but "audiophiles" are very good at borrowing trouble, don't follow them down that path.
 
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Amazon also sells Worlds Best Cable brand. Pretty cheap compared to boutique cables and an alt to Blue Jean. Nicely terminated. Put them in your six figure system without any concerns. If you hate Bezos, Blue Jean is awesome if you don’t want to be bothered stripping wire.
 
Welcome to the forum.

If you do a search for pertinent threads started by amirm you'll see objective analysis of how little cables of any type matter.

My last speaker cable purchase was a cheap spool of the largest gauge from Crutchfield that the use case allowed.

Edit: By largest gauge I obviously mean smallest AWG number.
 
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nyc_hifi said:
The speakers have a 4 post biwire setup, would biwire speaker vs jumpers be suggested
Click to expand...
Also wanted to mention that biwire is generally 100% pointless... you're moving the point at which the low and high frequency drivers are electrically connected outside of the speaker cabinet, but that doesn't do anything for the actual performance. So you can just keep the jumpers as is, nothing to worry about there.

The idea of filtering frequencies that aren't meant to go to each driver is critical (that's why crossovers exist) but this isn't what biwiring does, nor does it even slightly improve on that. The crossover is still doing all the work biwired or not.
 
nyc_hifi said:
I just bought a new system and while I'm an experienced and discerning musician, I'm new to audiophile equipment. Budget is flexible. What speaker cables would you recommend, from experience? As of now, I'm considering Cardas Cygnas or Clear Reflection. Someone suggested Synergistic Research as a line to look into, speakers are cornwall IV - high efficiency and horn forward of course.

PASS Labs XP20 Preamp>PASS Labs XA30.8 Pwramp>Cornwall IV speaker

The speakers have a 4 post biwire setup, would biwire speaker vs jumpers be suggested and what speaker cable would be a good match for this system? I listen to mostly live music recordings, grateful dead, phish, etc.
Click to expand...
Cardas is fantasy...Clear Reflection sounds like fantasy but never heard of them....3k on speaker cable generally is a great waste of money, $1/ft should be sufficient and that's more than I usually spend but I buy in bulk. Audiophile equipment is a non-starter, an audiophile is a person, not the gear. I'd just get some nice 12G zip cord from your local home improvement store personally and put my own connectors on them (if you need them). Biwiring is one of the silliest audiophile things going.
 
nyc_hifi said:
My only reference is a pair of decent cables that I spent about 200 bucks on but are much too long for my needs at 15 feet . . .
Click to expand...
wc.png
 
nyc_hifi said:
The speakers have a 4 post biwire setup, would biwire speaker vs jumpers be suggested and what speaker cable would be a good match for this system? I listen to mostly live music recordings, grateful dead, phish, etc.
Click to expand...

Just a comment on this last bit....kinda crazy to think wire makes a difference as to what you like to listen to.
 
kemmler3D said:
Also wanted to mention that biwire is generally 100% pointless... you're moving the point at which the low and high frequency drivers are electrically connected outside of the speaker cabinet, but that doesn't do anything for the actual performance. So you can just keep the jumpers as is, nothing to worry about there.

The idea of filtering frequencies that aren't meant to go to each driver is critical (that's why crossovers exist) but this isn't what biwiring does, nor does it even slightly improve on that. The crossover is still doing all the work biwired or not.
Click to expand...
Amusingly, my L&R floor standers are actually biwired. Somehow the manufacturer shipped them without the accessory pack of feet, spikes, and jumpers. The dealer vowed to get it sent but with arrival date uncertain. So I ordered a second pair of speaker wires from Amazon with free overnight delivery!

The shits of it was I had to spend 24 hours looking at gorgeous, expensive new speakers that couldn't be heard. And now they're just too heavy to hassle fidgeting with to get all that extra speaker cable cleaned up and replaced with the jumpers.
 
GD Fan said:
Amusingly, my L&R floor standers are actually biwired. Somehow the manufacturer shipped them without the accessory pack of feet, spikes, and jumpers. The dealer vowed to get it sent but with arrival date uncertain. So I ordered a second pair of speaker wires from Amazon with free overnight delivery!

The shits of it was I had to spend 24 hours looking at gorgeous, expensive new speakers that couldn't be heard. And now they're just too heavy to hassle fidgeting with to get all that extra speaker cable cleaned up and replaced with the jumpers.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't it have been easier to use a very short bit of cable to stand in for the jumpers?
 
You actually could either shorten your current cables, or if there is space out of sight to just leave them long that won't be a problem either with your speakers. Or if your cables will sell on the 2nd hand market, sell them and buy short versions of what you need.

As already mentioned bluejeans cables will sale you good quality cable with nice connections for not too dear a price. You can specify length and type of connections.
 
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