Extending a speaker cable

[HawkEye244]

I started stapling the speaker cable along the wall and skirting to tidy things up.

Problem is I'm short by a bit.

What's the best way to extend a speaker cable ?

I'd like to avoid striping and splicing the cables together really.

 

[Burnerman]

I guess you can either use a complete new length of cable, or splice in a new length - preferably by soldering and using heat shrink tubing for a neat job.....is it just ordinary twin core stuff we are dealing with here?
John

 

[Lucid]

I'd like to avoid striping and splicing the cables together really.

However it's done, extending speaker cable always involves stripping and splicing on a new part; so your comment about avoiding this really doesn't make any sense.

Whether you make soldered joints that are then insulated with heat-shrink, or use car electrics bullet crimps, or just twist the wires together and then insulate with electrician's tape or use choc block, every single method requires stripping back the insulation to expose the metal conductors and then making a metal-to-metal connection for each rail.

Solder and heat-shrink will give the neatest finish and it will still look good in ten years time. Bullets would be a possible second choice. Choc block is bulky and ugly. Anything involving insulation tape can turn in to a sticky mess after a while. These aren't the only options of course.

 

[HawkEye244]

Thanks guys,

I'll get around to do this job eventually, but I've been moved onto other tasks in the house, I'll keep you updated.

I just want to achieve a result that won't look bad once painted.

This cable is now approximately £20 a meter to buy new !

 

[DaveHerns]

I imagine that must be audiophile hi-fi cable and surely any joint/splicing would ruin the benefit ? That's if you believe £20 a metre cable is better than 20p a metre budget stuff

 

[JBR]

I imagine that must be audiophile hi-fi cable and surely any joint/splicing would ruin the benefit ? That's if you believe £20 a metre cable is better than 20p a metre budget stuff

I have read that it isn't!

 

[winston1]

I imagine that must be audiophile hi-fi cable and surely any joint/splicing would ruin the benefit ? That's if you believe £20 a metre cable is better than 20p a metre budget stuff

I have read that it isn't!

+1

 

[big-all]

you get an electrical impulse along a cable
this impulse lacks any intelligence so send it by concord or public transport the end result will be almost exactly the same it gets from point "A" to "B" and providing its a reasonable job the coils on the speakers will recieve the pulses and the sound will be identical
if its out off phase then swap the wires on one channel so both speakers are vibrating in sink rather than out off phase

try finding space at a corner under a floor behind the skirting in a safe area where you can terminate and rejoin the cable

 

[Sam Gangee]

This cable is now approximately £20 a meter to buy new !

That's seriously expensive copper. Try
http://www.satcure.co.uk/accs/page18.htm#loudsp

 

[Lucid]

Following a shift around in the living room I had to extend the cables for the surround speakers by a metre or so. Since there's some possibility that gear might move again in the future I thought it best in my case to have something where the extension could be removed easily. I use Z plugs (A.K.A. BFA plugs) for installation work: They're a hollow tube with a slit down one side which allows them to flex. This also allows one plug to slide in to another which makes a decent way to extend a cable with a good surface contact area and minimal bulk.

Z plugs are a bare metal connection, so the outside of the mated plugs must be insulated. In my case I chose clear heat-shrink tube and slipped that on before making the connection. Once the heat is applied then it both insulates and acts as an additional grip to hold the joint securely. The plugs themselves are fitted using a ratchet crimp tool for electrical wiring. Something like this would do. The cables being joined here are some QED Performance to some 79 strand flat.


Here's the plugs and my cable joints at home.

I don't intend to turn this thread in to a giant debate over speaker cables. For the record, my view is that for most people their systems and their rooms have a far greater effect on sound than any subtle differences a cable may or may not add. For that reason alone I think many of those who have tried blind tests of their own at home have come out with inconclusive results. I'll also say that for the vast majority of people it's enough just to ensure that the speaker cable is thick enough to carry the current being delivered. There's a lot of rubbish cable being sold online - and in particular cables that are very thin, or that have hundreds of very thin filaments, or that are not 100% copper at all. Copper Clad Aluminium (CCA) has no place in AV, music or Data Networking applications as far as I am concerned.

Now here comes the grenade....

In the right system then speaker cable differences can be heard. What's more, they can be measured independently too. Whether those differences are enough to change the sound of a system is really a question for the listener, but the differences are there. That's not the same as saying that cables "improve" a system. All I think they can do is either get out of the way more effectively or add some form of distortion that the listener prefers.

 

[JBR]

I'll also say that for the vast majority of people it's enough just to ensure that the speaker cable is thick enough to carry the current being delivered.

I'd go along with that.
The material may also have an effect, at least it will affect the electrical resistance readings which, of course, will be measurable. Whether that affects the sound is another matter.

 

[Sam Gangee]

My hearing cuts off at 5kHz in one ear so I couldn't possibly express an opinion on any subjective test.

 

[Lucid]

My hearing cuts off at 5kHz in one ear so I couldn't possibly express an opinion on any subjective test.

A measurement showing the differences between two components removes subjectivity from any attempt at an evaluation.

I'll post a link further down this page, but a little background first. Harman International is to the American speaker market what B&W, KEF and PMC are to the UK and the rest of the world. They're at the forefront of speaker R&D as far as the US is concerned. Their testing facility includes a sophisticated comparator, and on at least one occasion it has been used to ABX test speaker cables. The results were statistically inconclusive. That is to say that none of the test subjects could correctly identify a preference for an allegedly "better" speaker cable enough times to satisfy the test criteria.

One of the key people at Harman Intl. during this time was Allan Devantier. During a 20 year tenure he has been Head of Engineering as well as a speaker designer with a string of related patents and publications to his name. This is a seriously accomplished guy in the field. So when he got involved in a project to use measurement to look at the influence of speaker cables on loudspeaker reproduction then the game is running with a major player. It was he that pointed out why cable would affect a speaker and that the result could be measured. Here's a link to the article

Following on from the above, a further series of tests were conducted to compare a several cables purely by objective measurement of the influence they exerted on the frequency response of a speaker. Here's a link which includes the comparison graphs. LINK

The material may also have an effect, at least it will affect the electrical resistance readings which, of course, will be measurable. Whether that affects the sound is another matter.

See the graphs in the article linked directly above. In my opinion it conclusively answers the question about whether the sound changes (and it does), so the only remaining question is whether that difference can be heard once all the other factors come in to play in a real world application. This is I think where opinion and people's experience is most widely divided.

As a side note, I've just helped my F-in-L to buy a new stereo system. It's nothing fancy, a Denon DM39DAB and some Q Acoustic speakers. But going through the process of listening to his requirements, finding product that meets the criteria, taking him for a demo and listening to some speaker options, then bringing the gear back to his house and setting it up within the limits of where he wanted the gear reminded me of just how much of a difference there can be in sound from showroom to home location. It also reinforced my view that far too many novice customers are left floundering by poor sales people who haven't much of a clue how to help people evaluate gear effectively. It's little wonder that cable comparisons often result no clear advantage for any single product.

 

[winston1]

So it appears the thicker the cable the better. No need to use fancy £20 a metre cable though, heavy gauge flexible mains cable will do.

 

[Sam Gangee]

Having read the article, it took me a good ten minutes to realise that 24-ga probably means 24 awg (25 swg). Yeah, OK, I'm still asleep.
As that's only 0.5mm diameter, I can't imagine anyone using it to connect a loudspeaker - other than a 0.5W speaker in a portable transistor radio.

The comparison test with the $5000 dollar cable was interesting.