I just bought a new home theater receiver (7.1 with 110w @ 7 channels) and I've got to buy new wire to hookup the four surround speakers and possibly the front and center speakers.

The receiver came with tiny 22 gauge copper wire, and considering the distance I have to run the wire along the baseboard of my living room, I think I should get a bigger gauge wire. I just dont know what to get, I have some 16AWG speaker left over from my recent car audio install, but I'll need more to wire everything I have up.

Should I go with 16AWG all round, or 18? I think the longest distance I need to run is at most 50'.

12/30/2005 4:33:32 PM

12/30/2005 5:07:22 PM

chart is kinda hard to read, but it looks like 16AWG for what I want

12/30/2005 9:37:58 PM

Yeah, should be fine. Given the choice a couple bucks for a larger guage won't hurt anything.

12/30/2005 9:42:11 PM

16 should be fine, that's what we pre-wired our house with.

12/30/2005 9:47:04 PM

walmart in the car audio section has 50' 18gauge speaker wire for $3 I think... its really cheap and its fairly decent stuff

monster your just paying for the name. "non oxidizing" is a bunch of BS wire isn't exposed to air inside its sheathing so oxidation can't occur

1/1/2006 1:12:04 PM

you'll need at least gauge 8, gauge 6 to be safe

1/1/2006 2:37:17 PM

for 50'+.. i'd go 14 minimum..12 ideally.. especially if you like the turn the volume up on that receiver..

10 or lower is not necessary unless you have a lot of EMI in the area or are running wire across a football field.

you may have some noise issues at 50' with anything higher than 16 gauge wire..

good place to get cheap cable is partsexpress.com you can get 100' for like $25-$30. (edit.. looks like prices went up since i bought cable there last year.. but you can still get some really good quality wire cheaper than you would the same quality retail.)



[Edited on January 1, 2006 at 3:02 PM. Reason : ]

1/1/2006 2:54:57 PM

since I'm only wiring up surround speakers, which wont be my main audio source, I figure 16AWG should do just fine. I've just got to run the wires tonight.

State409b if I were running a 2 or 1 Ohm load for 50ft, then maybe 8 or 6AWG would be necessary, but for 8ohm home theater speakers it would be retarded to use wire that large

1/1/2006 5:54:00 PM