Power cords as sound cables

[Chip Gelmini]

POWER CORDS AS SOUND CABLES

I set up my outdoor movie theater with power cords for running the sound. They are more durable, and much easier to use. So why not use them? I’ve always hated the flimsy cheaper sound cable which isn’t always easy to find. Like most stock items in stores today, cheaper speaker wire is usually a wild goose chase to find it. Even more of a problem since Radio Shack is gone. Ahhh, those good old days of going to one place and finding what you need and as much of it, too. Truth behold: power cords are always easy to find!

I bought green and orange 50 foot power extension cords. I also bought two 10 foot extension cords. To make this work, I removed the female ends on the 10 footers, and the male ends on the orange and green. Next, the ground wire was trimmed close to the insulation and is not used for this.

With white and black stripped back about an inch and twisted to keep the strands secure, those are plugged into the speaker terminals when needed. And since some of the original male/female ends are still there, if I ever need more length no problem. Just insert added cable.

In addition, the separate colors help identify the proper channels. I’m using green as left channel, and orange as right. The orange cable also helps identify there are wires on the grass for safety when people are selecting their seats.

Power cord wire is very strong and can handle the sound perfectly. And it should, because it’s made to handle 110 electrical juice!

One word of caution folks. Those black cables coming off the amps. If those are stripped and connected to the speaker outputs (yep) and the other end is the male 3 prong power cable plug (yep) better not plug in to a true power outlet or you can kiss that amp good bye.....

Food for thought guys and girls……………….

[Steve Lee]

Hi Chip.

My home cinema has the speaker runs done in mains cable. In the U.K. all properties are wired with what is known as Twin & Earth. This cable contains a neutral and a phase that are double shielded with the earth strand running down the middle. The cable contains a single core of copper, and comes in different gauges from 1.5mm - 6mm.



This cable used to be cheap and made the perfect speaker cable for long runs. If it was tested side by side with the most expensive speaker cable it would win hands down every time, due to the single copper strand, but audiophiles would never admit to this.

When I originally built my home cinema, I started by running out the speaker cables first under the floor, but I did this twice. The first run was so it was possible to place the amp at the back of the room, and feed all of the speakers from this position. And for the second one for the amp to be positioned at the front of the room. All in all this took about 200m (650ft) of cable to do this job.
This is something I would not want to do again, especially at today's prices.

Steve

[Ken Finch]

High quality speaker cables is available here in the u.k. from hi fi audio dealers. It is also probably available from Maplins or other audio spares dealers. These are usually oxygen free copper which I understand gives better quality sound. My home cinema speaker cabling came from Maplins. Surely there must be similar sources in the U.S. Ken Finch.😊

[John Meyer]

I'm a little late to this, but I thought I'd mention that back in the late 1970s or early 80s, when "Monster Cable" was first on the scene and selling for 10x what normal wires cost, one of the stereo magazines did a blind test with about six audiophiles (mostly writers for the magazine) listening to the same source material though the same audio chain, with the only difference being the audio cables. They used the switch boxes which used to be common in audio showrooms which let the listeners instantly switch between several different wire types. They used various gauges of common speaker wire, starting with 12 gauge and going all the way down to 18 gauge. They then used common 14-gauge lamp wire and then finally one of the fancy "oxygen free" (whatever the heck that means) 12 gauge ultra-expensive Monster Cables.

Every single listener correctly identified the small gauge (18-gauge) wire, but none gave any extra points to the Monster Cable, and in the end, everyone agreed that common lamp wire worked just as well and was even cheaper than the simple wires marketed for use with speakers.

So, the only thing you get with those fancy wires are some really nice connectors (which can make a difference, especially over time as cheap connectors oxidize) and cable that is fat enough to not cause resistive losses.

So power cords (i.e. lamp wire) is what I've used for the past fifty years.

P.S. I have an EE degree and have never heard any explanation for the benefits of fancy cables that could be explained by RLC formulas or even by transmission line theory (which really doesn't come into play at audio frequencies).

[Steve Klare]

-and then of course I take all this fancy audio gear and run it through 60+ year old ears!

(At least I can still feel the bass in the floor!)

They are the ultimate limiting factor, John! (Never mind the wiring.)

[Brian Fretwell]

I think Which magazine also did the lead comparison test, but it was half and half as to which people thought was best.

[John Meyer]

-and then of course I take all this fancy audio gear and run it through 60+ year old ears!

(At least I can still feel the bass in the floor!)

They are the ultimate limiting factor, John! (Never mind the wiring.)

You hit that nail on the head. Mine are 70 years old and I just had a virus a month ago which ruptured my right eardrum. No pleasant. I was stone deaf in that ear for two weeks but, thankfully, now have about 90% of that ear's hearing back.

When I was young, back in the 1960s, some of the audio store installed burglar alarms which used high frequency waves. No one else could hear them. I could also hear the 15.7 kHz TV flyback transformers. It really stinks to have those high frequencies diminished, but since I started off with better than average hearing, even with all that I've lost, I'm still pretty lucky to hear well enough to not need hearing aids.

[Steve Klare]

I don't miss high frequency audio: I hear it even in a silent room! (Damned Tinnitus!)

[Rob Young]

Many moons ago in my 20’s I did think my Elmo had quite a bit of hiss. But these days it seems to have a lot less…lol

i worked for a couple of years in hi-fi, back in my late teens when my ears were good. We did blind tests on speaker cable and found that decent stuff like QED 79 strand was a lot better than basic cheap cable. It cost about £2 a metre back then.

Some of the stupidly expensive cable could certainly alter the sound, making it sharper or tighter depending on the cable but it certainly didn’t make it better. I found some even took away the warmth of the music.

I didn’t see the point of it. Smoke & mirrors. Like interconnects on old analogue gear; paying a bit more certainly improved things, but paying a lot more was pointless.

[Steve Lee]

Many moons ago we had one screen that was still using an old 60s sound system. One day a guy came in from twentieth century fox, and went into the auditorium, about ten minutes later he came out and said "What sound system do you have in there ?". I said why ? He said "That's the finest sound I have ever heared, it's so clear and sharp".
I then dragged him into the projection room and pointed to the old Westrex valve amp hanging on the wall. I said "It's mono".

I know a couple of people who are seriously into their Hi-Fi, but to the point where they are trying to find fault with it, rather than enjoying what they are supposed to be listening to. They will never be happy listening to music anymore, because this is now an obsession.
At the end of the day we all have different hearing, so you ask yourself what is the point, as long as it sounds good.

[Ken Finch]

The speaker leads I mentioned available from Maplins etc are not the expensive sets sold by hi fi stores. As mentioned, much depends on the quality of one’s hearing. Mine has steadily deteriorated and I have to have my hearing aids adjusted fairly frequently. Like you Steve I also now suffer from tinnitus. I have also heard many people commenting that they preferred the sound from valve amps rather than transistorised ones, and mono sounds better than stereo. Again much depends on the acoustics of the venue and the speaker systems. The cinemas built in the 1930s were designed for mono sound which would be clear and the same no matter where you were seated.Ken Finch.😉

[Brian Fretwell]

Just to add tha 100v line speakers use very thin wires as the current is lower for the same power, however the cable is thicker due to more insulation because of the higher voltage. I don't know if anyone did comparisons of them to low voltage speakers.