jimmygreen said:
OK, I looked into the wire and I found that there are different gauges and some come with two or four conductors.
I didn't understand why I would need four, and now that you mention future-proofing with four I am more curious.
There must be speaker out there now that have four posts, but I don't know much about them, and will it become more popular or even a standard soon? I would rather increase the budget now if I am going to get something that I don't have to replace soon.
Jimmy - When you hear us offhandedly say things like 16/4 or 12/2 it actually should mean something to you, which we should have realized that a newbie wouldn't be aware of.
The first number is the American Wire Gauge (AWG), or thickness, or the wire.
16 gauge is thinner than 12 gauge. Some cheap home stereo systems use 18 or even 20 gauge wire which is pretty thin. Cat-5e wiring which you use for networking or often phone connections is 22 gauge - really thin. Standard 120 volt wall outlets typically use 14 gauge or 12 gauge wiring, which you may know is pretty hefty.
So, a range from 16 to 12 gauge is most often used in home audio. Some people go even heavier than 12 gauge, but these are usually part of $100K+ systems with ridiculous power.
The second number is the number of separate wires inside the cable. Typically this is 2 or 4. A speaker has the positive power signal and negative power signal. So, it requires no less than 2 wires. Kind of at the bottom end is 16/2 which is 2 16 gauge wires, or enough to power a single speaker.
16/4 is enough to power 2 speakers or to work with a speaker that allows for bi-amping. But, the gauge may hold back power some. 14/2 or 14/4 allows more power flow. 12/2 or 12/4 allows for a lot of power flow.
In my home I used 16/4 for distributed audio. I have two speakers in every room of my home so I was able to use a single cable that had 4 separate wires inside of it to feed those rooms from my amplifiers. At the room I break the single cable out to feed the individual speakers. It makes wire management easier and costs less labor hours to run a single cable instead of 2 separate cables (2 16/2 runs).
If I were to do it again, I would get 14/4 to wire my home with as the cost is not a ton more.
You can pick up a 500 foot roll of 14/4 Monster CI-Pro cable on eBay for about $150.00 or so which is plenty to wire most home theaters up completely and leave you some left over cable. The extra conductors may never be used, or you may upgrade speakers and end up bi-amping, or doubling up the wiring which effectively makes the 14 gauge wire into something even thicker than 12 gauge - that's a lot of power handling.
16 gauge is excellent I think for distributed audio, but perhaps is a tad weak for the home theater, especially if you want to upgrade later on. I will never use anything less than 14 gauge for any theater.
On the other hand, the wires that connect one component to another inside your stereo rack, can be had for MUCH better pricing than Monster Cable and will give you similar, if not superior quality for far less money.
