Speaker wires are selected based on price, quality of construction, aesthetic purpose, and convenience. As long as speaker wire resistance is kept to less than 5 percent of the speaker's impedance, the conductor will be adequate for home use. The capacitance and inductance of the wire have less effect because they are insignificant relative to the capacitance and inductance of the loudspeaker. The wire's resistance has the greatest effect on its performance. ![]() The shorter and thicker a wire is, the lower is its resistance, as the electrical resistance of a wire is proportional to its length and inversely proportional to its cross-sectional area (except superconductors). The ideal speaker wire has no resistance, capacitance, or inductance. ![]() The impedance can be broken up into three properties which determine its performance: the real part of the impedance, or the resistance, and the imaginary component of the impedance: capacitance or inductance. Speaker wire is a passive electrical component described by its electrical impedance, Z. Essentially all speakers manufactured now use permanent magnets, a practice which displaced field electromagnet speakers in the 1940s and 1950s. Some early speaker cable designs featured another pair of wires for rectified direct current to supply electrical power for an electromagnet in the loudspeaker. Two-conductor ¼-inch tip-sleeve phone jacks came into use in the 1920s and '30s as convenient terminations. Other terminations were binding posts, terminal strips, and spade lugs for crimp connections. Cables were often soldered in place at one end. For portable applications, common lampcord was used, twisted in pairs for mechanical reasons. The accuracy of many advertising claims on these points has been disputed by expert engineers who emphasize that simple electrical resistance is by far the most important characteristic of speaker wire.Įarly speaker cable was typically stranded copper wire, insulated with cloth tape, waxed paper or rubber. The effect of speaker wire upon the signal it carries has been a much-debated topic in the audiophile and high fidelity worlds. ![]() Most commonly, speaker wire comes in the form of zip cord. The two wires are electrically identical, but are marked to identify the correct audio signal polarity. Modern speaker wire consists of two or more electrical conductors individually insulated by plastic (such as PVC, PE or Teflon) or, less commonly, rubber. Speaker wire is used to make the electrical connection between loudspeakers and audio amplifiers.
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