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Is 14 gauge speaker wire good enough


peavey2112

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speaker wire is stupidly tiny. 14 gauge is practically overkill. you're covered.

you can run black and white video coverage over standard speaker wire. trust me, i know. if you wire it up right, you're good. i used to work loss prevention, and that's all we used, b/c our cameras were black and white.

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Originally posted by Murdoch7621

speaker wire is stupidly tiny. 14 gauge is practically overkill. you're covered.


you can run black and white video coverage over standard speaker wire. trust me, i know. if you wire it up right, you're good. i used to work loss prevention, and that's all we used, b/c our cameras were black and white.

 

 

With video the issue is frequency response. Longer cable means more high-frequency loss means blurry picture. For audio the issue is IR drop due to resistance per unit distance. More cable means more resistance means power wasted in cable.

 

For the short distance between amp and cab you could probably use 18 gauge or maybe even smaller with no problems.

 

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Originally posted by Josh Savoy

You'd laugh if you saw the tiny speaker wire inside the cab.

 

 

Yes, but it has to do with the distance. The losses are I^2*R, where I is the current and R is the wire resistance. Current for a 60W amp into a 8 Ohm load is just under 3 amps.

 

Here's the thing: since wire has a resistance that is based on the gauge and the length, when you doulbe the wire length, youdouble the losses in the cable. For a few inches, you can run almost anything, but when you get to 10-20 feet or so, you need to have a big enough wire to keep from killing your signal. Copper wire at 14 gauge is 2.5 milliOhms/foot, while 18 gauge is 6.4 milliOhms/foot.

 

If you're talking about a 20-foot speaker cable, the losses are:

 

14 gauge = 0.9 Watts

18 Gauge = 2.3 watts

 

Get the picture?

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