Economic speaker wire

chenj16

since I'm starting to hook up my surround speakers and need some speaker wires so I came across this hookup/wiring section of the forum. I did whole bunch of search in the forum and found that people were talking about Home Depot wires!!! i have a low budget on this, I thought these cables or extension cords may actually work well?? and here in Toronto Canada, the home depot only has speaker wires branded by RCA, are they the ones you ppl were talking about? i really need some help and suggestion here on budget cables, thank you!

RuSsMaN

The RCA stuff is actually re-branded gruntball Monster cable.

Go to the wire section, find the spools of 16/2 Lamp Cord. You will have a choice of black (my fav), brown, white, clear, and clear with a gold tint.

Get you $.18/ft on, and call it a day. You won't do substantially better, without spending substantially more.

Cheers,
Rooster

chenj16

thank you russ! how do these lamp cords compare with the ones i can get from some small electrnoics store like

or this


and how is the brand Recton??.. i thought it's the same as RCA stuff, right?

RuSsMaN

I've never used either of the wires you've posted, but they seem run of the mill. Recoton owns AR, so you are probably looking at entry level AR cable, which isn't bad.

Cheers,
Russ

chenj16

Originally posted by RuSsMaN
The RCA stuff is actually re-branded gruntball Monster cable.

Go to the wire section, find the spools of 16/2 Lamp Cord. You will have a choice of black (my fav), brown, white, clear, and clear with a gold tint.

Get you $.18/ft on, and call it a day. You won't do substantially better, without spending substantially more.

Cheers,
Rooster

hey russ, i found the 16/2 lamp cord, but ridiculously it's more expensive than 16 gauge RCA speaker wire.... 74c/meter vs 62c/meter (about $.225/ft vs $.19/ft) i'm confused now... is a itself called speaker cable worse than something that is not intended to be used instead like a lamp cord?? please advise russ.

so my question now comes to the ranking among the three?
1) 16/2 lamp cord
2) RCA speaker wire
3) monster cable xp (sorry, i'm using these currently for mains)

another question: is oxygen free really important to speaker cables in the lower end?

please excuse my english... btw we don't have 16/2 clear or clear w/ gold tint... boring B/W and brown

RuSsMaN

$.04 a foot is rediculously more expensive?

Man, just buy whatever you want.

Willow

ChenJ16 do you have a princess auto ...if so go there I got a spool of 75ft rca rated speaker cable 14awg cost me 17$ it's what I am using for my rears. Go there and check it out. if not buy what you can afford you'll end up upgrading anyhow

chenj16

Originally posted by RuSsMaN
$.04 a foot is rediculously more expensive?

Man, just buy whatever you want.

no it's not much more expensive at all, i meant the fact lamp cord costs more than a dedicated speaker wire is kinda funny..

chenj16

Originally posted by Willow
ChenJ16 do you have a princess auto ...if so go there I got a spool of 75ft rca rated speaker cable 14awg cost me 17$ it's what I am using for my rears. Go there and check it out. if not buy what you can afford you'll end up upgrading anyhow

yeah, there is one in whitby ontario, not far from my home. i will check it out, thanks willow!

Willow

trust they have lots of stuff.... I replaced all my IC's which were reg AR with masterpro II by AR a cable that was 79$ I paid 15$

they had some monster cable I think it was Z series....I almost bought them just to have.....went home went back the next day they were gone. But I would't replace my kimber's with them.