ya, so i had my amp mounted to my box (i know, bad idea) and the fakker fell off, and was gettin thrown around where my back seat used to be... so i went to my fav auto parts store, home depot, and picked up sum longer speaker wire that was a lil thicker than my old, short wire...

well, after i rewired both subs w/the new, thicker wire, they were hittin harder....and sounding louder....

can someone explain this to me... im about to go to home depot and get the thickest wire they sell, and do my whole system w/it...

im sure it has to do w/resistance, etc... but i'd like to hear about the technical aspects and gains/losses with thicker wire compared to thinner wires..

tia

havnt posted here in a while...


unless the original speaker wire was very small (like 24 awg or smaller), there would probably not be a percievable difference in SPL by stepping up to a larger guage wire. that leaves two possibilities (that i can think of;-)):

1) it's entierly somatic. if you think it will sound better it usually does.

2) you mentioned that the amp was moved. if you changed your grounding location its possible that the voltage drop has been lowered, thereby turning some usually wasted heat into more power to the speakers.

my guess is still #1 though;).

The larger speaker wire has less resistance which would make a difference.

maybe not lounder, but a bit cleaner / tighter w/ less distortion.

right on.. my subz sound like azz...
2 10"JL i dunno what series, in an over-ported box powerd by a swapmeet 300watt 4channel bridged into 2...

they deffinately boom, but sound like ass w/the ports...

thanks for the replies tho...

Think about it like a hose...you can only push so much water through a hose with a good even flow. If you want to flow more water you need a larger hose. Push too much water through a small hose and it sprays out the end (distortion). But don't go too big or it will just trickle out :thumbsup I used to have a set of Rockford 8" DVC subs. Those little fqrs would hold 300 per voice coil. I didn't get near that, but I was running them at about 400 per sub (200 per voice-coil) and I was using 10ga wire for my subs. Most guys use 10ga for their freakin power wire. By the way, if you're one of these guys (hope you're not ;) ) then go up with your wire. I don't care how small my amp is I always use at least 4ga wire for power with a 4ga ground at the amp to the body and a 4ga ground return from the body of the vehicle back to the negative battery terminal. Yes I know it's overkill, but my systems always sound extremely clean and always make other guys say "Wait a minute, how do you get sound like that out of a system like this?" :)

I think generally a good setup uses 16gauge wire for component speakers, 12gauge for subs, and 4gauge power and ground for a decent system pushing a few hundred watts. Anything smaller will hurt performance, and anything larger is overkill unless you have a HUGE system.

umm...im still going to have to disagree with everyone about stepping up to larger guage wires. theres no reason for it. speaker wire is an a/c circuit independant of the 14 or so volts d/c that runs the rest of the car. theres a much higher voltage level, so the amperage can be decreased (ohms law power =volts x amps) to make the same amount of power. even with 16 guage wire, you are good up to many thousands of watts without any audible difference, because the total resistance of the wire will never go beyond about .1ohms. besides, the inefficiency of the speaker itself is so overwhelming that speaker wire is the least of your concerns. also, even the thinnest speaker wire will not cuase distortion. its not possible. distortion is a property of the output wave from the device, not of the cables.

go here for a good speaker wire calculator:

http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/speakerwireselectorassistant.swf