Home-depo extention cord to rewire stero?

[george graves]

Over thanksgiving I plan on doing some easy/cheap stuff to my e30. On my list is to rewire for a new deck.

I've read how home-depo extention cord beats some much more expensive wire...

http://stereos.about.com/od/connectionfaq/f/hd_cables.htm

"They rival some of the more esoteric and exotic designs in terms of sound quality (at least to my ear)."

QUESTION: Do you guys recomend this for speaker rewiring? If not, what other cheap alternatives are there?

Thanks!

...

[asubimmer]

i've used that for home theater...orange rocks

[Jand3rson]

I've heard from several people, and a couple of the car audio shops around here that have used and swear by extension cord speaker wiring.

[erik325i]

I've heard from several people, and a couple of the car audio shops around here that have used and swear by extension cord speaker wiring.

How is that any better than normal speaker wire? Is it just supposed to be cheaper? or is it because it has better insulation?

[Jand3rson]

How is that any better than normal speaker wire? Is it just supposed to be cheaper? or is it because it has better insulation?

I don't know the specifics, but I know that the better insulation has a lot to do with it.

[Spaz]

better insulation has a lot to do with it.

Basiclly thats one of the main reasons


The massive amount of insulation duces tit has rehe amount of electromagnetic interference you get from your ignition system/charging system :)

Due to extenison cord mainly been used for high draw applications in contruction etc. they are very thick gauges, and that in turn lowers the resistance in the line, and lower resistance the better. Explained from this qoute i took..

What happens when the resistance gets too high? First, there is power lost in the wire and the speaker will not play as loud. More important, as the resistance in series with the speaker increases, it makes the amplifier look more like a current source. This means the speaker frequency response will tend to follow the rise and fall of its impedance curve.

The impedance of most speaker systems is not constant with frequency. A speaker that is rated at 8 ohms may be exactly 8 ohms at only a few frequencies. The rest of the time it may wander above and below this value several times.

As the wire resistance increases, it becomes significant compared to the speaker impedance. It will affect the areas of lower impedance values first and eventually will be audible. Speakers with small impedance variations versus frequency, and that don't dip below the nominal impedance, will be more tolerant of higher resistance in the speaker wire. On the other hand, speakers with large variations in impedance that dip below the nominal value will be much easier to notice. If the speaker has constant impedance versus frequency, the only change will be reduced output.

[808BMW]

Just use speaker wire. Extension cord really isn't cheaper, partexpress.com has huge rolls of speaker wire for cheap.

Extension cord is just too big to hide nicely, I used it before, ripped it out and ran regular 12gauge speaker wire.

[BMW BMXER]

Ya speaker wire is pretty cheap at home depot at bulk. Just don't buy over priced car audio shit and you are good.

[chriskb3]

I use cat5 for my home audio and am planning on rewiring my car speakers with it also, not for the sub though, that would take multiple cables (3+) to get enough current to flow through it. not exactly a cheap way to go, but, i have a big spool of it laying around anyways...

[AndrewBird]

Why in the world would you run cat5 for speaker cable? It's way to small of gauge - like 24 guage. Speaker wire should be ATLEAST 14 guage IMO. Anything smaller and you get so much distortion and noise in the speakers.

AS far as the orange stuff goes, I've heard the same thing about a lot of guys using it. It is cheap, but like 808BMW said,
I would think it would be hard to hide. But if you aren't running rear speakers like most guys, it doesn't really matter.

[T.Dot E30]

lol cat5? is that a joke?

Maybe to power headphones or something.

[Axxe]

The only thing I would use cat5 for is remote turn on and to strangle the idiot who uses it in the car.

[chriskb3]

maybe i should have explained further on my previos post. i use cat5e which is made of 6 pairs of wires, combine the + and - of those 6 pairs gives a big enough gauge to carry power to an individual tweeter or lower power demanding woofer. by running a cable (6+ and 6- 24 ga. wires) to each speaker should give me a large enough gauge to carry the current needed.

search some on the internet and you will find that the sound quality from cat5, used as speaker wire, compares to some of the very high hi-fi speaker wires out there such as Kimber, Audio Quest, and XLO which are on a level above Monster Cable which i used to use. the individually insulated and spiral wound (of + and -) strands of wire keep out a lot of exernal "noise" that causes the distortion and static heard from speakers. inside a car with hundreds of wires and many electrical componets in such a small area, the way cat5 is made would help to block out much of these electronic noises emitted so you dont hear it in your music.

although im not saying that a car is the ideal place for hi-fi sound, the amount of clarity and detail that comes out of the treble and midrange using cat5 is quite considerable (atleast from my personal experiences with my hand-made home audio setup using Vifa drivers as well as others that have posted similar findings on the internet).

here is a close up pic of some cat5 speaker wire and a pic of one of my speaker towers when they were being tested and tweeked

[KangamangusDriver]

At the shop I use to work at we used 9wire, if you do the math there is wire for each speaker and one for the remote. Worked well, sounds very similiar to the extension cord.

[terible1biker57]

maybe i should have explained further on my previos post. i use cat5e which is made of 6 pairs of wires, combine the + and - of those 6 pairs gives a big enough gauge to carry power to an individual tweeter or lower power demanding woofer. by running a cable (6+ and 6- 24 ga. wires) to each speaker should give me a large enough gauge to carry the current needed.

search some on the internet and you will find that the sound quality from cat5, used as speaker wire, compares to some of the very high hi-fi speaker wires out there such as Kimber, Audio Quest, and XLO which are on a level above Monster Cable which i used to use. the individually insulated and spiral wound (of + and -) strands of wire keep out a lot of exernal "noise" that causes the distortion and static heard from speakers. inside a car with hundreds of wires and many electrical componets in such a small area, the way cat5 is made would help to block out much of these electronic noises emitted so you dont hear it in your music.

although im not saying that a car is the ideal place for hi-fi sound, the amount of clarity and detail that comes out of the treble and midrange using cat5 is quite considerable (atleast from my personal experiences with my hand-made home audio setup using Vifa drivers as well as others that have posted similar findings on the internet).

here is a close up pic of some cat5 speaker wire and a pic of one of my speaker towers when they were being tested and tweeked

I myself was very interested in this until I came upon this article.

http://www.installer.com/tech/cat5.html