New Purchases Bring New Questions...

[stash3630]

Hello everyone,

I finally decided to upgrade my home theater experience as I was still trying to breathe life out of 5+ year old purchases. My new setup is as follows:

32" LCD Flat Panel Sony Bravaia XBR1
HKTS 14 Harman Kardon 5.1 theater speakers
HD digital cable box from Time Warner
Monster's M1000 HDMI to HDMI cable
XBOX 360 with Monster's component & fiber optic cables
Harman Kardon AVR 130 receiver (purchased 1-2 years ago)
Infinity Alpha speakers (also purchased 1-2 years ago; i think they are "shelf" speakers)

In general I am open to any and all suggestions, but I do have some particular questions I hope you all could answer.

1) What type/brand of speaker cable do I want to buy? I have heard that the wires that come with my new HK 5.1 system aren't any good and that I should upgrade them. Is this true? I have seen four prong wire and two prong wire. It's all very confusing to me. I don't plan on running cable through any walls; probably just along the base of the walls. Any suggestions on securing cable, in particular to wood floors, would be helpful too.

2) Where do my infinity alpha speakers fit in with my new speaker system and its setup? Will they still be utilized and if so, where will I put them in relation to my new satellites? What output will they use?

I'm sure there are other questions that I'm not thinking of now, but these seem the most pressing to me. Basically, I'm extremely anxious to setup my new system, but I want to make sure I do it all right the first time. Since I plan on having this setup for a long time I really want to make sure I have optimized the performance of all these purchases. Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[racquetman]

The speaker wire you have is probably fine. You didn't say what gauge it is or anything, but speaker wire is generally speaker wire.

I would leave your infinity speakers out of the mix, and go with the matching speakers you have. That will give you the best tonal balance throughout your setup.

 

[stash3630]

I'm not sure of the gauge, but it looks like normal speaker wire; pretty thin and black in color. Are you sure the system wouldn't benefit from a higher quality thicker gauged cable?

 

[Pyrrho]

I'm not sure of the gauge, but it looks like normal speaker wire; pretty thin and black in color. Are you sure the system wouldn't benefit from a higher quality thicker gauged cable?

Take a look at:

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

 

[racquetman]

I'm not sure of the gauge, but it looks like normal speaker wire; pretty thin and black in color. Are you sure the system wouldn't benefit from a higher quality thicker gauged cable?

Speaker wire is one of those industries that is alive only because of people's ignorance. You don't need anything special, so you may follow the chart that was in the link offered by Pyrrho if you wish. The termination of the wire might be something to focus on more that the wire itself. Like anything else in the home theater game, feel free to try a higher gauge, higher quality wire in the system, but if you don't hear a difference then all you've done is wasted money. Remember that if you go in believing that new wire will make the system sound better, your brain will probably convince you that it sounds better. As everyone likes to point out on this forum, there is no scientific evidence pointing to a audible difference between speaker wires. Don't let a salesman tell you it will sound better, if you don't hear it yourself then you've wasted your money.

 

[stash3630]

Reading a review on my HKTS 14 surround speaker system, I noticed that some people reported the wires moving around against the contacts and that a thicker gauged cable might prevent this. That alone might be reason enough for me to try some new cable. That and the fact that I don't have much of a problem dropping another 50-100 bucks on a home theater system that already has me out over a few thousand dollars. I almost see higher quality cables as an investment of sorts. I'm not trying to argue or play devil's advocate alandamp. On the contrary; I really appreciate your help so far. I just want to educate myself so I'm not going back and redoing things I could've done right the first time. If I do go ahead and purchase fancier cable, what brands should I look at? What brands make a good product, but aren't overpriced? What's the best place to buy new speaker cable that includes the option of returning it? Best Buy, Circuit City? What are the advantages/differences from 4wire cable and 2wire cable?

 

[racquetman]

Read through this thread: http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18482&highlight=speaker+wire

It should give you some basic info. Basically, you are fine just finding the cheapest cable you can, as long as it's not too thin for the length you want. You want standard 2 wire cable (by 4 wire I assume you mean a set of wires designed for bi-wiring speakers - which you don't have the capability of doing with your satellites).

I know you want your setup to sound the best it can, but spending money on fancy cables at inflated prices won't help the sound any. Places like Circuit City and Best Buy are told to push their Monster cables hard to consumers, as they offer a good profit margin (I'm assuming). There are threads after threads on this forum discussing speaker wire (do a search if you want to dig deeper).

I haven't bought speaker wire in a long time, so I don't know if anyone has a return policy or not. If you want to make your life easy, go to whatever store is convenient for you (Best Buy, Circuit City, Radio Shack, Lowes, etc . . .) and buy the cheapest cable they have in the gauge you want. You might be able to find bargains if you hunt around or shop online, but that's up to you. You don't need to make this overly difficult. Trust the experienced people of this forum and go with something reasonably priced - don't let any salesman tell you that you need to buy a certain brand of speaker wire. It just isn't true.

 

[jcPanny]

System upgrades

Concerning the speaker wire, for your current satellite system, the wire will not matter. If you plan to upgrade your speakers, it would be worth while to upgrade the speaker wire to any quality 14 AWG or 12 AWG speaker wire such as sound king from parts express.com. On carpet, you can usually shove the wires under the baseboard, but I don't think this will work with wood. you might consider routing them up into the attic and down to each speaker.

Your current receiver should have plenty of power for an entry level system and a speaker and sub upgrade would provide the most improvement. Take a look at the new X-LS speakers and sub from AV123.com. Also check out the speaker sub package from SVS. Both will provide a real HT experience.