Is wire wire? I say a 4 guage, 1000w wire kit at wal-mart for $25 and then I say a 4 guage, kit at best buy to, but it was close to $100. should I spend more? will it sound better or is wire wire?

 

For the most part wire is wire. The better kits you see at Best Buy vs Wal-Mart is that typically the Best Buy kit will have a better fuse holder, connectors, RCA's, etc. However for all intents and purposes 4 gauge is 4 gauge and the only difference would only be seen with test equipment other than that it is pretty much name brand and specialty store mark up.

 

Oh, just make sure that both kits contain the same items. You may be getting more in the Best buy kit such as distribution fuse block, RCA's, fuses, etc. Just make sure they both contain the same items.

 

The $26 Scosche Dual Amp 4AWG kit at Walmart is awesome for the price. The RCAs could definitly stand to be replaced with a basic twisted pair set but the rest of the equipment is great for the price. Does not include speaker wire.

 

What does the twisted pair do versus the regular pair that it comes with ?

 

Twisted pair signal wire greatly reduces noise. Both the + and - wires are hit with the same noise and a positive and negative that are equal cancel eachother out. It is the most basic and effective means of noise cancelation in signal wiring.

You may be fine with the straight copper that comes in the kit. I just like to spend too much money and get silver wire twisted pair with foil & teflon shielding plus drain wires and fiberglass pull rods and 24k gold and billet aluminum ends. But hey thats just me

 

WWW.KNUKONCEPTZ.COM try there ..pretty cheap prices..

 

Funny you bring up Knu. I used to compete with him in wire sales on ebay. He had his (at the time) generic wire and accessories while i sold Scosche. I had him beat in price by about 15%. I get out of the market for a while and next thing I know he has his company name screened on all his products, has an inet site, and tons of ebay sales. Guess I should have stayed in that venture.

 

Wal marts wire is just fine

 

www.deuskoceptz.com ?

 

One thing's for sure, wire is NOT wire.

That said, will you NOTICE a difference in sound? Probably not.

I'm going to throw out one simple concept here, rather than go into the details of wire differences.

The reliability of a wire depends solely on its ability to effectively conduct a signal. This is where the number of strands comes in. The wire I was partial to when I started with this stuff was made by PIE, but it looks like they don't make that particular type these days, or they just renamed it. In any event, this wire is extremely easy to work with, very bendable and pliable, and that is a direct result of the number of strands it has. If you try to work with a spool of radio smack wire, you'll notice that if you bend it, it retains the shape you've bent into it, and that makes it a little more difficult to work with. The complementary argument is that this concept is a result of using too few strands in the cable, which just means that the few that are there are extremely thick (relatively).

"A chain is only as strong as the weakest link". Good quality cable (for one thing,) has way more stands than typical regular ol' "wire" so the signals can travel easier and more reliably.

The other factors mentioned above my post are also very valid, I just wanted to elaborate on a simple concept to illustrate that wire, in fact, is not wire.

 

When you say "good quality"...You need to state the purpose...The best wire does not always have the largest amount of strands...The easiest to work with "bendable" for car audio has a large amount of strands..

 

LMAO...you must have started out in home audio.

Wire is Wire as long as it is 99.9% OFHC copper. Some maybe thicker some maybe thinner; some may have more stands some may have less strands. As long as it is the same guage the only differences will be its ability to bend, and its insulation.

Now are all RCAs the same no...thats a different story some use things other than copper and better connectors.

As for the walmart kit, there couldn't be a better buy in the audio industry. (well except for my Zapco amps )

 

Skoal,

Prior to attacking someone's response you may want to seriously take a moment to reflect on what they happened to be responding too. I did say that wire is wire but also ended it with FOR THE MOST PART (now if I am not mistaken, reading this in the English language would imply that there are in fact diferences but not of significant impact on the question asked). While it is true that wire is wire for the most part, I mean if they are of decent quality. As pointed out already the only real benefit of fine strands is the fact that it is much more suited to car audio since bends and curves are the norm for wire routing. However you can't tell me with a straight face that in regards to power wire 1,023 strands are better than 894 strands. What it boils down to is copper is copper in the wire world and virtually all if not all are using the 99.9% OFHC copper in their large gauge power wires. Now, I never did mention RCA cables other than the fact that some are better than others and the cheaper priced kit probably contained less than desirable inter-connects which actually was confirmed later in the post.

Now, if we would like to discuss true diferences in wire than ok we can do so. Best conductor=silver reason it is not used is primarily cost and the simple fact that it tarnishes horribly. So comparing a Kimber Kable Silver to a Radio Shack Copper would obviously be an unfair comparison and would not compare apples to apples. Why is gold used for connetors? Well mutliple reasons actually and probably none of them what most people think. First and primary reason is that unlike copper and silver and all the other top notch conductors out there, gold does not oxidize as rapidly as the other conductors that are actually better than it. Now the other benefits that gold provides is beauty, the thought that many still think it is a better conductor than copper, other various marketing strategies plotted evily behind the scenes to misinform the general public.

Ok, I think that can cap it off for now but if you feel like really getting in depth of just what exactly seperates one wire from another please feel free to ask. I am sure you will find that I can provide just as much dog food as you could ever eat.

 

I'm so glad I didn't have to type all that out.