Gadgetory

so you're jumping into the world of do-it-yourself home fear which is awesome but how do you go about choosing the right components well one way is to start by thinking of one of the most fundamental concerns for any home theater novice or veteran which is electrical impedance a measure of how much a speaker or wire will resist electrical current this is important because too little power will make your nice new speakers sound like garbage you see all speakers have an impedance rating which is measured in ohms you might be familiar with ohms if you're into shopping for headphones freestanding speakers however have a much lower impedance rating then said headphones would since they need a lot more current to drive them most speakers are rated between only six and eight ohms so additional impedance introduced through improper wiring can impede the performance pretty badly fortunately though knowing what kind of speaker wire to buy isn't terribly difficult well as true the consumers can be bedazzled and befuddled by marketing hype the things that are really very important are also very simple it's just length and width you can think of speaker wire kind of like a water pipe not a great analogy but either way just as it's easier to push lots of water through a short fat pipe compared to a long skinny one runs of shorter thicker wire have a lower impedance and therefore carry current more easily which is important for any speaker worth its salt and especially important for higher-end speakers with impedances of four ohms or less thinner wires can be passable for very short runs but if you're trying to install something in a larger room or want any kind of surround setup it's important to pay attention to the gauge of the wire which is a standard measurement of thickness that can be a little confusing since a smaller gauge number indicates a thicker wire if you're rocking 8 ohm speakers for example readily available 16 gauge wire will give you good performance up to 50 feet but keep in mind that since speakers can have variable impedance depending on what frequency they're playing at any given time it's not a bad idea to pick up wire a little bit thicker than you need in order to compensate you should also try to stay away from wire runs longer than 50 feet of the thickness as it can cause you to lose a little bit of the higher frequencies due to coppers electrical properties so what does this mean for the average home theater user if you take a typical room size of about 20 by 16 feet and put your display on one end and use conservative estimates for wire length and thickness a 60-foot spool of 16 gauge wire would serve you just fine for your rear speakers while you can get away with just about 30 total feet of 22 gauge for your front Center and subwoofer this assumes you're using a typical six to eight ohm speaker setup and if you went with a higher set of say four ohm speakers you'll want to go with fourteen gauge for their surrounds and twenty gauge for the stuff up front and that's an at least for all of those okay Luke I've got it short thick wires are good but are those the only things that matter those the only things I have to worry about well it makes sense to make sure that your wires are insulated well to protect against interference and maybe you should try using pin or banana connectors rather than just sticking bare wires into your speakers that can help ensure that you have a solid connection however spending hundreds of dollars on premium cables in all likelihood will not lead to any sort of improvements in terms of sound quality so save the money you would have spent on that stupid snake oil and maybe put it towards some shiny new TV that you can watch tech wiki on with the room shaking sound you've always wanted Dollar Shave Club get razors and other bathroom supplies shipped directly to your door for only a few bucks a month you need other stuff too like dr. 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