Audio Cables. Information can be found here on the various types of cable you can use with general audio equipment and the advantages some types of audio cables have over others.

Cables for Audio equipment come in many different forms and materials depending on their quality and purpose of use. Each individual cable has the same purpose of transmitting audio signals from an amplifier to a speaker. The quality of the audio cables can depend on many different factors such as the guage of the cable, the quality of the materials used to make the cable and their conductivity and also the insulation of the cable.

Most Audio cables use twisted copper strands to give a good form of conductivity, obviously the bigger the guage the more conductive. The smallest audio cables start at around 16awg (awg standing for guage) these would be normally coated in a thick plastic resin and only consist of a small number of copper strands.

The guage then goes up respectively 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and finally 0. 0 of course being the largest thickest cable. Most home audio equipment would require 10-12awg audio cables with a good insulation. Most cables of this guage would have a much thicker rubber casing. The better quality audio cables will consist of 2 separate cables each with their own insulation and then a larger insulation combining the 2 cables.

A typical Home Hi-Fi set up can use up to around 100w per channel whereas a typical car audio set up can range from 200w upto 2000w so generally a much larger audio cable is required and it is suggested upto 8awg is used with higher power equipment.

Other forms of audio cables include OFC cables which stands for oxygen free copper. This kind of audio cable is usually of a reasonable guage and the insulation is so good its oxygen free. These types of audio cables are highly recommended for most audio enthusiasts. One material that is much more conductive than traditional copper is silver, while much more expensive silver audio cables would produce a much higher conductivity resulting in a better quality sound.

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Professional Loudspeaker Audio Cable

This type of audio cable is very similar to the oxygen free copper cable, however it has an extra layer of insulation around the outside of the cable combining the two cables used for + and -. Generally it also uses slightly tighter sound copper and can be more flexible to place around corners in a room. This audio cable again would be very suited to a home Hi-Fi setup but would also be suited to an in car instillation. It is also available in 8-12awg and generally costs around £3.50 per meter.

Silver-Plated OFC Audio Cable

Flat 2-core loudspeaker audio cable featuring silver-plated, OFC (oxygen-free copper) conductors. Silver plating is to a thickness of 100µm and each core is organised as three bundles of twisted strands, the three bundles are again twisted together and insulated in a 3-channel special PVC transparent sleeve. The sleeve forms a figure of eight cross section with its opposite partner and can be easily separated

This is as good as it gets, short of pure silver audio cable. This cable is highly conductive and would produce the ultimate in sound quality. However slightly more expensive at around £5.00 per meter.