I'm looking for a little advice on speaker wire and connectors. As to the connectors (specifically between my RR2150, my Marantz CD player and an EQ), it appears there is division between those who believe that there are significant gains to be had by purchasing higher-quality RCA connectors versus those who don’t. I am no audiophile, but I suspect that whatever RCA connectors companies send along with their products (amps, receivers, cd players, etc.) could be sufficient for most people as the manufacturers would not want their product’s quality impacted by something as simple as the connectors. But I don’t know. If anyone a thought on the matter I would appreciate hearing
it.

Also, with speaker wire,are there significant gains via certain speaker wires, rather than just the thickness? I am going to use either 12 or 14 gauge wire to connect my RR2150 to my Studio 100’s. Does brand/specs matter much beyond the gauge? I don’t want to spend a ton of money on speaker cable or RCA connectors, but could see dropping $30-$70 total (I’ll need just 25 feet of speaker cable and about 4 feet for the RCA connectors) if it would make a difference to someone who will not necessarily be spending much time straining his ears to note very subtle variances in sound. If I do spend some money, I have heard good things about Blue Jeans cable. Any others to look into?

Regards,

Dennis

If you go to Blue Jeans and read about the speaker wire banana plugs, they even recommend using bare wire

The audio and video cables you will find included with a typical DVD player or VCR are basically throwaway cables. They are sufficient to create a connection, but they aren't actually very good. Compare them to what you get from Blue Jeans Cable (since they are already on your list, and since I've used them quite a bit myself), and you will find that the included cables lack any shielding (which makes them highly susceptible to interference and noise if they are close to power cords), the connectors are typically flimsy (which can allow them to develop a loose connection and interfere with signal transmission), the wires are of a very small gauge, and manufacturing is of low quality. Manufacturers include them for convenience, but the only such cables I've actually used in at least a decade are the power cords and the HDMI cables that OPPO includes with their players (which are the same as the widely-used HDMI cables sold by MonoPrice).

I A/B'd monoprice's premium RCA cables against a set of Monster M850i's...and did not notice any significant difference. If you're wanting something with a warranty, Blue Jeans or Cobalt both make excellent quality cabling, and I think both have locking RCA terminations?

Lots of companies make good quality 12- and 14-gauge speaker wire, but I tend to go with the ones that are inside a single jacket for ease of feeding and handling. Personal preference. Bare wire is as good as any other connection, but bananas are typically easier to insert/remove in tight areas. In any event I usually spray cut speaker wire w/contact cleaner, as it's the most likely area to corrode over time.

A friend of mine, very pleased with his Adcom pre/pro & amp, uses these for all but one connection. I started to tell him something was wrong, and I just crapped out and shook my head...why give him an excuse to be unhappy about it?

Thanks for the input and suggestions.

I am trying to decide between the blue jeans and the monoprice
cables for components. For what I need, the price comparison
is around $80 versus $10. Would the additional $70 bucks be
money well spent for my humble little system (the RR2150, Marantz CD player & Paradigm Studio 100s)?

Sluggo, when you A/B''d the monoprice and the monster RCAs you said you didn't detect any "significant" differences. Does that mean there was a difference between the two but that it
was not significant?

Thanks.

the differences were subtle at best, like the shimmer of the cymbals...but of course, you may know the adage: you will find what you're looking for if you look hard enough...I may have been "straining my ears" as you said.

As cheap as the monoprice cabling is, my thought is...what do you have to lose by trying it first?

Thanks again. I've ordered up some cable from monoprice. That could suffice, then again if I detect flaws I could attribute to the cables (not so likely) or feel like I want to upgrade just to be sure I'm not hindering the ability of my components to shine/want the feeling of having greater quality/get all ocd on my system (much more likely) then I'll go to bluejeans down the line.

Is there any reason to go with the hype for HDMI 1.3 and get new cables or is it just a marketing ploy that the 1.3 system could use a lot more bandwidth and thus needs a different cable.

There's a fair bit of hype to it from what I've read. Unless you have a long run that you're pushing 1080p across, I wouldn't change cables unless I ran into a problem - even then, I'd probably experiment a bit first.

Thanks Gonk, once again you have saved me $$$.