speaker wire

[Afury8]

I have new Infinity primus 252 speakers for my fronts and a primus c250 for a center. I have them wired with 16 gauge wire. they are not very load and was wondering if it is my speaker wire. it is cheap wire that i have had for a long time. my receiver is a denon avr587. 75 watts per channel. don't know if this is the problem either.
I watch more movies and tv then music but that is changing now that i have better equipment.

 

[gixxerific]

It's not the wire.

 

[Adam]

It's probably not the wire, but it might be the connections. Do you have connectors on the ends of the wires (like banana plugs), or just bare wire? If it's bare wire, have you stripped it lately? You mentioned that the wire is old, and it might have become oxidized.

It probably is something else, though.

EDIT: If you have a meter, you could check the continuity of the wire. There should be very little resistance in the wire.

 

[jamie2112]

Oxidized wire can cause sound degradation. I would try what Adam suggested and strip the wire further. And as always if you need to buy speaker cable www.monoprice.com is your best bet for cable. It sounds like a connection thing unless your AVR is taking a crap on you.....

 

[Rickster71]

How long are the wires?

I wonder if the speakers are wired out of phase?
Make sure the + plus go to + plus, etc.

 

[markw]

New speakers, eh?

I have new Infinity primus 252 speakers for my fronts and a primus c250 for a center.

I'll place my money on them having a lower sensitivity rating* than your old speakers and you simply have to turn the receiver up more to attain the same volume.

*That means they take more power to drive them to the same level as speakers with a higher sensitivity rating. It's like putting an engintaking an engine from a light car and putting it into a heavier car. It's gotta work harder.

 

[AVRat]

How high are you turning the receiver up? Try -15dB and see if it's still not loud enough. You shuld also check to see if the channel levels are set correctly, around 0dB.

 

[Afury8]

thanks

I was able to advance the setting on each speaker to +5 and that seemed to wake up the speakers. I had them all at zero and it was real flat.
I dont now where I would set the denon to +15 where is this done?

 

[Adam]

To clarify, AVRat was suggesting that you set the master volume at -15dB, not to set the speaker levels up by +15dB. To be clear, that's MINUS 15dB.

I believe that the general point was just to turn the volume up.