Cables for rear surrounds

Hey bdp24 good observation -  never occurred to me that 16 gauge may not be good for 50' run of cable. Anyone think 14g would be better?

Anyone think 14g would be better?

Yes, I do. Depending on which of the PSB speakers that are listed in your system description you would be using for surrounds it appears that their impedance is either 4 ohms nominal, or 6 ohms nominal and 4 ohms minimum. IMO, in general it would be good practice to keep speaker cable resistance to about 5% or less of speaker impedance, and preferably less. It can be calculated from this wire gauge table that the combined 100 foot length of two 50 foot conductors of 16 gauge copper wire has a resistance of about 0.4 ohms, or 10% of a 4 ohm speaker impedance. 14 gauge would reduce that to about 0.25 ohms, or about 6% of a 4 ohm speaker impedance. Still not ideal, but probably good enough.

Another issue that can arise when using long cables is inductance, which can result on upper treble rolloff and sluggish transients with some speakers. In this case, though, I suspect that the impedance of the speakers probably rises significantly in the upper part of the treble region, which together with the fact that you are just using them for surrounds will probably reduce that effect to insignificance.

Regards,
-- Al

Check out table one in this article

http://www.audioholics.com/audio-video-cables/speaker-cable-gauge

Depending on the speaker Impedance, you might want 12 AWG. I used Blue Jean Cable for my surrounds

+1 to almarg & murphyb74.  Here's another chart:  http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#wiretable.  I went to 10 AWG KnuKonceptz cable all around with soldered Audioquest spade terminations and picked up audibly better definition and frequency response.  All of my speakers are 8 ohm nominal impedance and my rear surrounds are 40 and 45 foot runs, respectively.

There are some older threads that address the topic of different speaker cable lengths.  You can decide for yourself after you read through them.  good luck & happy listening!

I see some recommendations for BFA terminations, but I have found them very brittle and prone to breakage. I much prefer spades.
B