Reader Mail: Best Speaker Wire?

Reader Jimmy writes: Do home surround sound systems come with speaker wire? If not, what kind will I need?

While some audio and video cables are getting more and more sophisticated—you've got your HDMI, your component cable with three RCA plugs on each end, optical digital audio, and so on—speaker wire has, for the most part, stayed pretty much the same. In fact, the same speaker wire sold back in the 70s will work just fine with today's speakers. The only questions are how thick (or what gauge) your speaker wire should be, and how you'll connect the wire to your speakers and receiver.

Before we get to that, here's a quick primer on speaker wire and the wire inputs and outputs. Speaker wire itself is pretty basic: it consists of two copper bundles separated by plastic insulation, and these bundles literally conduct electricity to your speakers—so whatever you do, don't cross the wires once they're attached to your receiver, or you could damage your components. Anyway, on the back of your amplifier, you'll find a pair of connectors for each speaker channel—a negative and a positive, with the positive connector typically marked in red, the negative in black. You'll find a pair of similar connectors on the back of each speaker. The idea is to either screw or clip the speaker wire to each connector, making sure that the copper bundle that you attached to the positive lead on your receiver gets matched with the positive lead on your speaker (same with the negative lead).

So, first big question: what gauge wire should you buy? Online retailer Crutchfield has an excellent beginners' guide with a chart that'll tell you what you need depending on the length of wire. Now, if you bought a moderately priced home theater and you're wiring a single room, and your speaker won't be any further than 80 feet from your receiver (probably a safe bet), you should be fine with standard 16-gauge wire. Wiring multiple rooms, or have a set of $8,000 speakers? You might want to consider thicker wire, say 14 or 12 gauge (the lower the gauge, the thicker the wire).

Now that you've got your wire gauge set, what kind of speaker wire should you get? There are two basic types: a standard coil of speaker wire, and speaker wire with pre-made connectors. The coil of speaker wire is the cheapest way to go, but you'll have to strip off the insulation at the ends to expose the bare wire, while the pricier variety has the connectors already prepped for you. Personally, I don't think stripping the wire is all that difficult (the wire clippers in your tool box should do the trick), so I'd rather spend, say, $10 on a 50-foot coil of 16 gauge wire without connectors than $35 for a package of Monster-branded wire with connectors. But if you're not comfortable stripping the wire yourself, then by all means, spring for the pre-made connectors—just beware of salespeople trying to sell you gold-dipped, $150 packages of speaker wire (more on that later this week).