14 Gauge Speaker Wire For Sub Woofer Cable?

[mbaldridge]

Hey Guys - I am moving into a new house that has speaker wire ran to the location where the sub is going to sit. It is going to be extremely difficult to run another wire. Therefore, is it possible to use the speaker wire to hook my sub to my receiver? My sub is the JBL Northridge™ E Series E250P.

I have a sub out on my receiver.

I have seen where I could use a coax cable w/RCA jacks on either end, I just have not seen anything about using speaker wire for a sub cable.

Thanks in advance!

Matt

 

[jcPanny]

Sub connections

Do you have two pairs of 14 AWG wire? If so, you can use your subs speaker level connections.

The line level connection from the LFE RCA jack on the receiver to your sub is designed to be used with a 75 ohm sheilded cable. Speaker wire will perform very poorly because it is not the correct impedence and is suseptable to noise. Furthermore, you will need experiment with locations of your sub to get the best performance.

Consider running the sub cable under the baseboards. I have also heard about a couple wireless systems for sending the signal from the receiver to the sub.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Matt - Hopefully this isn't new construction and it was not something you specifically paid for. If it WAS, contact them first and foremost and have the work redone.

Coaxial cable to RCA is the minimum proper way to wire for a sub. It is the industry standard.

Now, knowing that you may not be able to do this, you go on out and pick up some solder type RCA connectors and warm up your soldering gun.... or go buy one. It should work, but some noise may be introduced on the line - especially over a longer run. Speaker wire is typically not a shielded cable, so you may have some noise. But, if the line is far enough from power cables and it is not that long of a run, then you may have no issues at all.

Using the cable is NOT the issue, the quality of the sound you actually get may be, but we won't know until you have it 100% hooked up... then let us know.

 

[mbaldridge]

No - just one wire.

If I have to place the subwoofer far away from my receiver - say 20ft or greater, will a coax cable (like the one used to hook up cable tv) work w/RCA jacks on each end?

Matt.

 

[mbaldridge]

Thanks guys for the advice - I will let you know the final outcome.

Matt.

 

[BMXTRIX]

No - just one wire.

If I have to place the subwoofer far away from my receiver - say 20ft or greater, will a coax cable (like the one used to hook up cable tv) work w/RCA jacks on each end?

Matt.

Yes, this is industry standard and works awesome. You could spend hundreds, or thousands on a really nice 'specific' subwoofer cable and it may offer almost zero audio improvement over using RG-6 quad shield cable at 10 cents a foot.

 

[maxse]

I actually posted a reply to a thread asking about 14 guage speaker wire.. Anyway I need about 40' cable for my sub, is this distance "safe."

I am getting a SVS 25-31PCi sub. I see it has some connectors on the back that look like the back of the reciever that accept speaker cable. I have no idea what this is for. My recievers only output to the sub looks like an rca type of jack output.

Since im getting more speaker wire than I need is tehre any way to connect my sub using the speaker wire into those input on the back of the sub? What are they even used for?

And finally if not can you sugghest a good shielded 40' sub cable? I have suspended ceilings in my basement and thats where the electricity is wired for the basement (right on top of the cardboard I even saw some romex just laying on top). I want to make sure I get no distortion. What would you guys recommend?

 

[BMXTRIX]

I actually posted a reply to a thread asking about 14 guage speaker wire.. Anyway I need about 40' cable for my sub, is this distance "safe."

I am getting a SVS 25-31PCi sub. I see it has some connectors on the back that look like the back of the reciever that accept speaker cable. I have no idea what this is for. My recievers only output to the sub looks like an rca type of jack output.

Since im getting more speaker wire than I need is tehre any way to connect my sub using the speaker wire into those input on the back of the sub? What are they even used for?

And finally if not can you sugghest a good shielded 40' sub cable? I have suspended ceilings in my basement and thats where the electricity is wired for the basement (right on top of the cardboard I even saw some romex just laying on top). I want to make sure I get no distortion. What would you guys recommend?

I would recommend that you use the RCA type output from your receiver and a 40 or 50 foot RG-6 quad shield cable with RCA connectors on the end. You can do it yourself for about 100 bucks and have a ton left over if you want, or you can use pre-fab RG-6 quad shield which the local cable guy can make for you. Then use F-type to RCA adapters. If you put in a wall-plate, you can get keystone inserts that go into them that will convert from F-type on one side to RCA on the other side. Then just use a short RCA cable from the wall to your receiver.

 

[maxse]

Holy crap that sounds complicated. I dont get why it owuld cost me $100 for regular coax? Isnt it much cheaper? I think I have a whole lot of that cable left over from my DirecTV install that was extra. I can just plug in RCA connectors on each end and that would give me a good quality sub cable?

*EDIT* Im not really interested creating a wall plate. Dont see the need for it.

 

[jcPanny]

Read the description off the insulation on your speare coax cable. It is probably high quality to support the bandwidth of satellite TV.