Bought some 14/2 “speaker wire” from Home Depot


So I decided to amuse myself and on a recent trip to the Home Depot I bought some 14 gauge speaker wire. 25 ft for under $11.
I have what I think is a good system and my current speaker wires are analysis plus mesh oval 9 terminated in spades. My system is noted in my profile.
I substituted in the 14/2 I picked up- each leg is about 9.5 ft. Tinned bare wire at each end. I did use 4% silver solder.
Quite listenable, though perhaps not as extended at the high end. If someone told me I had to use the Home Depot wire I’d get along just fine. Leads me to one of 4 possible conclusions- 1- my hearing stinks; 2- my fancy Analysis Plus cables aren’t anything special; 3- my system isn’t resolving enough to make a difference; 4- given sufficient gauge, cable is cable. Of course, it’s also possible that my system is so good, any wire will allow that to shine through 
Your thoughts, comments, etc appreciated 

thanks
128x128zavato

Showing 5 responses by audio2design

It would be pure copper as pretty much all residential 14 awg Romex is. How will tinning the ends change the sound? 96% may have lead may not.
I will go with mainly 4, but high frequency is mainly inductance not gauge of wire so your Analysis Plus cables don't need to be that special to be work well.
Exactly Zavato.

Teoaudii, that is why good engineers design for stability and hence properly applied even with a complex load distortion can be much less (even or odd) with negative feedback than so called linear amplifiers which are only somewhat linear. All comes down to implementation.

Williewonka. 50 years and never once see a slimy deposit on wire and I have stripped a lot of wire. Sounds like Uber cheap offshore or some boutique brand that did not know what they were doing.



Felixa the op stated stranded 14 awg. Most definitely not skin effect classic or otherwise. Inductance would be a much bigger impact at 20khz.
Math is your friend.

9.5 feet of 14awg solid core, skin effect at 20khz adds about 0.01 ohm of added resistance. However the wire was stranded so this will be quite a bit less.

20khz zip cord speaker wire 14 awg, 9.5 feet, inductance would add 0.3 - 1 ohm AC resistance at 20khz.

For the 3rd time it's not skin effect it's inductance.

FYI skin effect is not impacted by magnitude of current until exceptionally high currents.
How about you do the math and show my results to be wrong .... I am confident the numbers are more than close enough to accurately portray the situation not to mention that virtually every reputable cable vendor that uses actual engineering concurs that inductance is the issue.