For a very long time I have read with misgivings that high dollar cables sound different/better than cheap radio shack rca cables.
I took the gamble, an expensive one at that when you consider all the mistakes I made, of making my own " Boutique " RCA cables. Not really expecting to hear any difference , but rather cleaning up the cable mess I have in my HT cabinet.
After one weeks worth of listening to all my best recorded music I now can speak from my personal experence, which is, boy was I wrong.
The music plays louder at lower volumes, the high shrilly tones are gone as is the deep bass boominess.
How can this be ?
If I could be wrong about RCA cables I guess I could also prove myself wrong on Speaker Wire. Which is why I ask this question, is it better to use cat 5e cable for speaker wire in the DYI realm ?

Bill, all I can say is "welcome to the club". I know that some (or many?) on this forum will disagree, but I found that everything matters and makes a significant audible difference.
Treat yourself with good speaker cables and power cords and you'll find a new world (sonically that is).
Chris Ven Haus has a recipe for speaker cables based on CAT 5E wire.
Or you may choose to buy AudioQuest "by the foot". No frills or terminals, but bare wire works very well. It all depends on what impedance your speakers have and how much you're willing to spend.
For HT, if your speakers are 8Ohm and are satellites, AQ type 2 will give you a wonderful upgrade. I enjoy this wire thoroughly in my HT system.
For my dedicated stereo I have AQ type 8, for the speakers are 4 Ohms and the current draw calls for a different gauge.

I made mine out of cat5. I posted pics earlier in another thread, I will look for them....

I used coat hangers. The bass is awesome and the highs are you know well... High

Bill O: Sounds like your original cables were pretty lossy and I'm guessing add some distortion as well.

For speaker wire I think getting the gage right is the most important thing and the other factors not so much. I just strip the wires and and tighten the nuts. Here's the resistance in ohms/foot for some of the various gage wires (copper):

10 .00118
12 .00187
14 .00297
16 .00473
18 .00751
20 .0119
22 .0190
24 .0302

As an example, running 18 AWG wire 20 feet will give a resistance of roughly 0.15 ohms. If your speakers are nominally 4 ohm then roughly 7% of your power is lost in the wiring. Go with 12 AWG and the loss gets down to less than 2%

I thought of coat hangers except that brazing all the coat hangers is going to cost me more than wire.A better option is " two strand barbed wire ", I have miles of that stuff.

Good old 12ga. bulk wire from Lowes does a fine job, though it isn't real fexible.

I use straight 12 or 14 gauge lamp cord from HomeDepot. Just make sure your speakers terminals are big enough to latch on to the cord and that no spare strands are touching anything else. The coat hanger reference was to an experiment some guy did to his brother and friends where he substituted wire coat hangers for high end speaker wire and they chose the coat hangers as sounding best in a blind listening test.

I am using Home Depot Speaker wire at present. I have noticed the wire turning green , that is the reason I am considering doing my own .
I do know the Audio Critic made reference to the blind test using coat hangers.Looking inside a speaker cabinet and seeing all those itty bitty wires leaves one to believe any metallic conductor should work.
I will stand on my previous statement that the cables I made sounded much better than the ones I was ussing. Once again I was not expecting any cyhange in sound, but I did hear it. It may be that some of my RCA cable were old to the point of failure . Nevertheless ,as long as a rca cord is not grounded out or the connection bad, it should work just as well as the coat hanger for speaker wire

I agree!! Most of us refuse to believe that smaller gauge wire will handle what we think are these large loads we lovingly refer to as speakers. I prefer 12 or 14 gauge wire for just the reason you just stated. The wiring tends to corrode over time and turn green. Then it tends to lose some of its performance. The larger wire allows for a greater tolerance of the corrosion between re-stripping and re-attaching the wiring. 16 gauge wire is rated for 12 amps at 120 Volts which equates to more than 1400 watts. About the time I can put 1400 watts of power to a single speaker, its time to get a new hearing aid. Even at the reduced voltage coming out of an amp (about 40 volts) the wire is still good for almost 500 watts. 12 gauge wire is rated at 20 amps or 800 watts at 40 volts. More than enough to get the job done.