14AWG speaker wire

[Bman123]

Hello, I have a room pre-wired with 14AWG RCA speaker wire for a surround-sound home theater. How can I figure out which speaker system will match a 14-gauage wire connection? I can't really re-wire without tearing into the walls, which I don't want to do.

thanks

 

[Adam]

Welcome to the forum!

Odds are, you can use any set of speakers that you want with those cables. I'm a fan of the Roger Russel page here that discusses guidelines for choosing speaker wire gauge as a function of the length of the wire and the impedance of the speakers. The bigger the speaker wire, the lower the resistance in the wire and the lower its contribution will be to the overall impedance of the speaker/wire combination. That said, speakers and wire size don't really "match." I've run thinner wire than suggested on that page (and Audioholics has their own wire recommendations) without any noticeable effects...at least, noticeable to me.

 

[j_garcia]

Use appropriate connectors (I prefer banana plugs) and you should be able to connect to nearly all speakers. 14AWG is likely sufficient for most speakers; it isn't really until you get into some demanding ones that you might see a problem and I'd say that would be a rare occurrence.