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General discussion

Quick question...

Jul 18, 2005 5:24AM PDT

Can you use the red & black AV cables as speaker wire if you strip them? I stripped the wires, and found another insulated wire inside, along with some copper wiring and tried to hook them up to my speakers, to no avail. My mother is insistent that it should work, but I tell her we have to go buy actual speaker wire. Either that or these speakers are busted (which ishighly possible since we just found them at a house we purchased).

Thanks for your help,
Mitch

Discussion is locked

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Da, Tell Yo Mama I said to buy speaker wire
Jul 19, 2005 8:05AM PDT

First of all, why even try to use the wrong kind of wire when you can go out and buy speaker wire for dirt cheap. Besides, something worth doing is worth doing right. Just buying speaker wire will save you lots of trouble. Am I correct in thinking that AV stands for Audio-Visual? If so, then it probably wont work anyway because it is made to have a metal tip and be inserted into an entirely different kind of input than speaker wire. Also, it may not even have the correct wire inside it and definately has at least one extra wire for the video siganl. To put it simply, dude, Just go buy some SPEAKER WIRE at Radio Shack!!!!

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"Just go buy some SPEAKER WIRE at Radio Shack"..Wrong Answer
Jul 19, 2005 9:10AM PDT

Nope, don't get anywhere near RS. Read my post below (above?) to learn why.

Sheesh!

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WELL>>>
Jul 19, 2005 11:01AM PDT

You don't have to be so mean about it, SHEESH!! I still told him correctly that they didn't work, I just didn't realize I'd have you coming after me! Well, Radio Shack wire would, in fact, work, just maybe not with the optimum results of Mr. Techno's lamp wire... Right on though Phychdoc for correcting me...

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Sorry....
Jul 19, 2005 11:04AM PDT

...Didn't mean to be so mean. It's just that 20+ years in high end audio lead to some pretty (ahem) firmly held positions. Didn't mean to jump down your throat though...sorry.

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Quick Answer....
Jul 19, 2005 8:54AM PDT

...Speaking as an audiophile who has spent tens of thousands on audio gear (including some very exotic interconnects and speaker wire), I gotta tell you rule #1 about speaker wire: NEVER (and I do mean NEVER!!!!) use that crap the give you or sell you in a big store. It's most often very thin (like 22 or 24 gauge) single copper with the other strand being some cheap zink alloy. It's total garbage. Any salesman who tries to give or sell you that crap should lose his job on the spot.

Now, by the same token, save your hard earned money and pass on those exotic wires. Some will do nothing and others will improve the sound maybe 5% in rare cases. Go to any local hardware store and get a length of 16 gauge "double copper" (both strands are copper) wire. It's often referred to as "lamp cord" and is readily available for $0.16-0.20/foot. 95% or better the sound of the most exotic $100/ft speaker wire at <1% of the cost. Believe me, you'll be happy.

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To answer your question
Jul 19, 2005 9:12AM PDT

those red and black av cables are built like coax cable... in other words you have 4 sets of wires running thru 2 cables. You probably stripped back the wires on one end and exposed different wires on the other end and when you made the connection you simply didn't have the right wire hooked up on both ends.

The other thing that may be going on is this...are you hooking the other end up to a powered speaker output ? If you are leaving the plug on the other end (this is called an RCA plug after the company that invented it) and sticking the plug into the audio outputs from your tv then you wont get any sound because there is not enough power present to drive a speaker. In this case you will need an amplifier.

let me know whats up Mitch. good luck.

grim