What size speaker wire do I need?

What size speaker wire do I need?

• I am going to wire my home for home theater system. I am having the home built and want to run the wire before sheet rock goes on. What's the size gage wire should I use?

• Answer:

  In truth - for home theater it probably does not mater, but for a music system they use 12 ga or 4-wire, 16 ga and twist 2 of the wires for + and two for -. (This is what they use in high-end installs). You also need to use in-wall or CL3 rated wire. The copper is the same, but the insulation is special so it wont act like a fuse to spread a fire. I suggest you buy a spool of in-wall rated from a speaker building site like www.partsexpress.com. Home Depot also sometimes carry "Carol" brand that is in-wall rated. Zig Zag the wire between the studs. Use insulated staples pounded in half-way. Years from now - the exposed copper wire become brown and brittle. Tug the wire to pop the first staple so you can cut the ends and re-strip. Tug more for more slack. Make sure to separate speaker wires from any other interconnects you put in the walls. Try to avoid AC power wires. If you must cross power wires, try to do it at 90 degrees. OTHER THINGS: - You want Cat5 or Cat 6 network wire behind your gear. More and more theater stuff wants internet connections. - You want a phone line behind your gear. Cable and Sat companies want this (and take $5 off your bill per month) if you hook up the gear to a phone line. - Subwoofer: Buy in-wall rated CATV coax cable and run it from the rack to the corner of the 2 longest un-broken walls. You attach "F" connectors and "F to RCA Male" adaptors and you have a long subwoofer cable. If you dont like the CATV coax trick - check out www.bluejeanscables.com for long subwoofer or HDMI cables. Also - check out HomeTheaterFourm and AVS. There may be other ideas you want to do before the sheetrock goes up.