RCA versus regular speaker wire for Sub-Woofer

[arvind_h]

Hi

I was going to change the location of my subwoofer but I erroneously bought regular speaker wire and when I was going to install it, I found out that my Paradigm subwoofer was RCA to RCA. Is it alright to take the speaker wire and solder RCA tips to it and use it for my subwoofer with less than perceptible audio errors or will I be commiting treason? Thanks
Arv

PS: The shop will not take back 45 feet of speaker wire since "He wont know what to do with it"!! so trying to save 50 bux here ...hopefully!

 

[j_garcia]

Use RCA/coax. There is no shield on speaker wire, so just wiring on a RCA connector isn't a good idea (my friend's contractor used speaker wire and he got hum - they had to come back and re-run coax). It will work, but it will not work well AFAIK.

You won't need to spend top dollar on a RCA cable, just use regular RG6/59 coax from Home Depot with RCA connectors.

 

[Adam]

j_garcia nailed it - that speaker wire doesn't have any shielding. However, you could always try it out and determine if you experience any effects (hum) from it. Depending on what you have around the wire, you might be okay. Odds are, you'll need to go coax, but you can always try what you have first.

 

[j_garcia]

Yep, doesn't hurt to try it at the very least.

 

[arvind_h]

Thanks Garcia, Adam, my speaker cable is S14-4R-CL standard 14 gauge 4 conductor speaker cable by Monster (its meant for hidden wiring). U think this has "sheilding"? By shielding do u mean that the plastic coating has some metal in it to provide electrostatic shielding and cut out some interferences?

 

[j_garcia]

Speaker wire is generally not shielded because of the signal level that it carries, but running line level via unshielded speaker wire would mean that if there are any power wires that this wire runs near, it could very well pick up hum from those lines. If it is far enough away and/or does not run parallel for any length of time, you might get away with it.