Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

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The resistance numbers for copper wire...

Posted by mlsstl (A) on September 8, 2024 at 17:57:38

In Reply to: RE: Question about switched from stranded wire to solid core internal wire posted by SuperB on September 8, 2024 at 03:07:58:

... are reasonably well established. One foot of 14 gauge wire, whether stranded or solid, has about 0.003 ohms of resistance, though solid may have slightly less resistance. For an 8 ohm speaker that would represent 0.04% of the circuit's total resistance (ignoring any impact of a crossover circuit).

If you use one foot of 18 gauge wire, the resistance doubles to 0.006 ohms, or now 0.08% of the circuit's resistance.

Oh, and don't forget to double the numbers since you have two runs of wire, one for positive and one for negative.

Silver wire is about 7% more conductive than copper.

Note we are talking about a speaker's internal wiring which would typically be very short distances. In terms of resistance, the crossover circuit will have far more impact if the speaker has an inductor in series with the woofer since they have a much longer length of much smaller gauge wire wound into a coil.

Stranded wire is often used for high frequency circuits, but this doesn't become an issue until one is WAY beyond audio frequencies, i.e., radio frequencies. The more common reason to choose between stranded and solid wire has more to do with flexibility and termination issues.

Or, you can take the subjectivist approach and ignore the numbers. Try wiring the speaker both ways and see which you like the best.

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Kimber Kable

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