Does it matter what size they have to be? And is it safe to use the same ones from home ent. for it?

 

The size is not important. RCAs carry a low voltage signal to the amp. A nice quality cable is good, with nice connectors, etc., but will not improve sound quality necessarily over a cheapo. And exotic, high priced cables are useless except for trying to impress someone who knows no better. It has been proven over and over.

 

Well when I twist or move the cable up and down from the amp it gets louder? But when I let it go it will go back to regular play

 

Are you talking about where the cable connects to the amp? If your system plays louder at some point than at others by moving the RCAs, then there is a connection problem of some kind, it seems. Could be the jack where the cables connect. Could be where the wire is soldered to the RCA plug on the cable. But, sounds like something is wrong based on the way you describe it.

 

Where the cable connects to the amp. But when I put RCAs from home audio it seems to play louder, is this safe?

 

Totally safe. If one set of cables allows the system to play louder, then something must be wrong with the other.

 

Is the shorter the cable best?

 

There's no point in ever using any cable or wire that is longer than it needs to be to reach its connections. It won't necessarily hurt anything if your cables are too long, but it makes for a sloppy looking installation. If you don't have a decent set of cables, they aren't that costly, so I would lay out some speaker wire or something to measure the length of RCAs I need, and then buy the proper length.

 

Generally what are better for RCAs home or car? I am going to buy some new ones...........

 

Get some decent ones of the proper length that are made for car audio, simply because they are made for the rougher environment that they will be going through, not because they are different. Don't cut yourself short when you measure. Check out two ebay vendors by the name of thestereodirect and trucktunes. They have some unbelievable prices on some quality installation equipment.

 

then again, nobody has mentioned that some rca cables are better than others. like monster cables are alot better than the 2.99 cheapos. and its all in the shielding. its like gauging your speaker wire.

your speakers are going to be alot louder if you were to use 12 gauge over 22 gauge.

but basicly sounded like the one pair was getting some kind of outside interferance by possibly being to close to the ground of the amp or some other electrical source. this is one place you dont want to be cheap because it can affect the sound quality and how loud it can get

 

What about speaker wire 18g compared to 14..............

 

Speakers will not be a lot louder simply because of using different speaker wire. Even with a 1000 watt output from an amp into 22 AWG wire, there is no audible difference between that and 12 AWG. This is not made up, but is a figure that can be calculated, and the difference is less than .3dB. The 22 AWG is certainly not the correct wire to use, but the difference is NOT audible. There is some difference in the resistance and consequently there is voltage drop, and you could go to the extreme where the wire size could be a safety issue, but an audible difference just isn't going to happen between 12 and 22 AWG.

As for the RCAs, while it is nice(and advisable) to use a quality cable up to a point, again the differences have been proven through blind listening tests to be INAUDIBLE. Even so-called experts have failed the tests over and over, much to their dismay. Like speaker wiring, there are measureable differences, but that doesn't always translate to AUDIBLE.

 

ok then. use the comparision of useing 8g power wire over 4g. and then lets do a survey of how many people with large systems and then see who uses what size wire and why.


the whole point basicly was to explain you want to get the thicker rca cables (example mosters) over the el cheapo's that have no shielding.

 

Comparing power cable and speaker wire or RCAs are completely different things. RCA cables carry very, very low voltages. From less than 1V to a few volts at the most. I made my own RCAs for my headphone amp I just built and I used two strands of 99%plus pure silver wire of 28AWG. There is no need for huge RCA cables in any case, but the shielding is a must.