Home audio/home theater experts: advice about speaker wire, set-up, etc.

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, I finally got sick of having a TV with a great picture (Panasonic plasma) and crappy sound. I also wanted to have a better sound system available in the living room for music (CDs, MP3, streaming, etc.).

Our situation is as follows: We’re in a two-story apartment, which is pretty narrow, so the TV is against one wall and the couch is against the opposite wall. There’s no room for a complex surround sound system, with speakers behind us. I also didn’t want to spend a massive amount of money.

I’ve bought a pair of Polk Monitor 65T floor-standing speakers and, based on some very good reviews about sound quality, features, and compact size, i’m about to pull the trigger on a Marantz NR1403 5.1 receiver. I’m also going to grab an entry-level Polk subwoofer, and later on i might also, if it seems like it would improve things, get a center channel speaker.

When i order the receiver, i’m going to need some speaker wire, and i don’t know shit about this stuff. It seems that there are different ratings for speaker wire, and i’m not sure what i need for this setup. Also, some people recommend getting banana plugs for the speaker wire, while others say that it’s perfectly fine just to attach the bare wire to the speakers and the receiver. Finally, some people talk about something called bi-amping, which you can apparently do if you have a basic stereo setup with a receiver that has spare connections. I’ve read the Wiki article and a couple of other online pieces about bi-amping, but i’m still not sure if i can do it with my set-up, or whether it would be worth it if i could.

So, any advice about this stuff would be welcome.

What wire?

Should i get banana plugs?

Can i bi-amp? And is there any benefit?

Thanks in advance.

2

Bi-amping is usually more for significantly more expensive setups. Certainly more elaborate than one with an AV receiver. You’d need an electronic crossover to split bass and treble, two amps, and speakers with no, or bypassable crossovers and two pairs of terminals.

Speaker wire can bring people to passioned debates. If you insist, you can buy Monster, but 16 gage zip cord will do just as well at your price point. If you had a couple thousand dollars worth of speakers and amplifiers, and listened exclusively to vinyl records, you might tell a difference, but even that is questionable with all of the digital sources you’ve got.

As for banana plugs, they are truly optional, but they do make it easier to connect the wires, especially to that forest of jacks on the back of the receiver.

3

Highly recommend the Marantz gear. They make great stuff. I have a Marantz pre-amp and 5-channel amplifier and have been very pleased with them.

Ignore bi-amping. This can be a useful mod for very high-end systems, but you don’t need it, especially in a small space. To do it correctly requires re-wiring the guts of your speakers, which you probably don’t want to do anyway.

Banana plugs are convenient (easy to plug and unplug) but not necessary.

Any copper speaker wire will be fine. Don’t overpay. Don’t get anything thicker than 14-guage. Here’s a hundred feet of the stuff for ten bucks. You’ll need some wire strippers too.

4

Thanks to both of you, although we seem to have conflicting advice about the recommended gauge of the speaker wire. :slight_smile:

This is one of the things i’ve been running into on the internet. Some folks recommend sticking with 12-gauge (and not above 14), while other suggest 16. I haven’t even been able to work out what sort of difference it would make, if any.

Your comments about bi-amping being for high-end set-ups is consistent with some of what i’ve been reading. There seem to be a few people who insist that it can benefit entry-level stuff as well, but they seem to be in the minority.

Banana plugs are cheap, so i’ll probably grab some just for convenience.

5

Actually, i think i just betrayed my ignorance.

In measuring wire, i have now concluded that larger numbers equals thinner wire. Sort of like measuring gauge in a shotgun. Is that correct?

6

The thicker the cross-section of the wire (lower gauge number = thicker), the lower the resistance of the wire.

Audiophiles like to claim that using speaker wire that is much thicker than necessary results in superior sound, because there is less resistance. The problem with this idea is that at the level of current required to drive a typical speaker, over typical wire lengths, the difference in resistance between, say, 14- and 12-gauge would be immeasurably small.

My rule of thumb is that 16-gauge is fine for any run shorter than 50 feet. Of course, it doesn’t hurt anything to use thicker wire, if that’s what you have.

7

Right.

8

OK, thanks. The speakers are going to be no more than about five feet from the receiver.

Off to order my goodies. I’m looking forward to setting it up this weekend!

9

One of the problems that I faced in doing a home theater setup was the argument from my SO about cluttering up the room with speakers. I already had two floor standing Polk speakers setup for biamping and a Polk center speaker. To solve the problem I installed ceiling speakers for two rear speakers which I use as the left and right back stereo and two front high left and right speakers. I have a 9.2 receiver using two Polk subwoofers that I picked up for $125 each. The center channel speaker sits above my TV and the Polk’s (left or right front stereo and sub) sit to each side of the TV. The other four speakers are all ceiling mounted as described above.

Bi-Amping allows for separate feeds to each speakers tweeters/midrange and woofers and I have been doing this back since the 70’s with great success though ideally your speakers should already be setup for this.

I use a Denon 9.2 receiver and an Oppo which is the absolute best DVD/CD player on the market for it price.

10

I’ve heard good things about the Oppo.

I can’t really say I see the point in having two separate subs. The low-frequency stuff is non-directional anyway.

11

Re: Banana plugs

They’re nice but hardly necessary. I get the impression you’re just going to hook it up and be done with it. And check to make sure you have banana jacks on your amplifier and speakers. And regardless of the power ratings of your amp and speakers, I doubt in an apartment you’re going to be pumping 100w to your speakers. You’ll do fine with 16 awg zip cord.

12

I love the low bass and two certainly do fill the room up quite nicely.:wink:

13

wire is wire. Don’t overthink it. 18 gauge is perfectly sufficient for a short run. lamp cord is fine. Audiophilia is full of easily-duped idiots; if anyone tells you to budget a certain percentage of your total spend on cables, kick them in the crotch.

if your listening is done in a small room (and if this is in a house, it’s a small room) there will be cancellations depending on where the subwoofer is placed and where your listening position is. multiple subwoofers- strategically placed- can even out the frequency response of the system in that room.

14

Lamp cord?! :eek: Oh, the humanity! Using lamp cord is nothing short of abusive. It will destroy the highs and attenuates low-end dynamics. No, what the OP needs are a set of Everest cables from Audioquest. They have a dielectric bias system and counter-spiraling earth-feature geometry. They even use spread-spectrum technology! Does lamp cord use spread-spectrum technology? Nope, didn’t think so.

15

Ha! shows what you know, what do you think the white light from an incandescent lamp is made up of? Why do you think audiophiles use the term “brightness” for the sound quality?

Seriously for the OP, spend the cash on the amp and the speakers. As has been said, past a certain (very low) price point, wire is wire. Your suggested set-up will give a decent bang-for-buck and if you’ve been used to just TV speaker output then you’ll be very pleased with what you get out of it.

I’ve never seen a proper, double-blind test that shows an ability to distinguish expensive speaker cables or interconnects from cheap stuff.

16

I would hope so, considering they apparently *start *at $500 for a Blu-Ray player.

17

Or coat hangars.

With those Polks, I think you’d get more benefit from a center channel than a subwoofer. I’ve got a pair of RTi8 speakers (2-way towers) and they put out a decent amount of bass. Doesn’t hurt that I’m driving them with one of these. :smiley:

18

Is that right? What makes you say that?

In reading reviews of the Polks, i’ve seen some people say that you really need a sub, while others argue that you can do without it. Quite a few argue that a sub is probably not necessary for music, but is essential for watching movies etc. on the TV.

I’m going to set up the receiver with the two speakers and see how it goes. If it seems like i need a sub (and/or a center channel), then i can easily order one and add it to the system.

19

I recently set up something similar to the OP: nice receiver that connects to the TV and uses two front speakers for the sound. It didn’t take long for me to add a center speaker. The problem was mostly due to sports, though some movies also had issues. The problems was that dialog was difficult to hear.

From my meager understanding, with two front and a center, the dialog is mostly coming from the center with ambient sound mostly going to the two front speakers. With only two front speakers, the dialog was competing with the ambient sound and often losing. With sports, the loud crowds would mostly drown out the broadcasters (note: not always a bad thing). With action oriented movies, the dialog could also be difficult to hear through all of the bangs and rumbles.

I recently added a sub-woofer, and I don’t think that it adds much to most of my viewing. With some sports and a lot of movies it does add a rumbly bass that is quite noticeable. To be fair, I haven’t spent any time tuning it to maximum effect. I also don’t usually have the volume very high.

20

This is all correct, although a good receiver can mitigate the issue if you configure it properly so it knows there’s no center channel speaker. Then it will mix the center channel and side channel outputs in such a way to make it listenable; but it’s really better to have a center channel speaker there.

If you are going to primarily watch movies/TV, a center channel is more important than a subwoofer. If you are going to primarily listen to music, a subwoofer is more important.

ETA: Of course the best is to have both. :smiley: