What is speaker cable?

Speaker cable is the wire used for the electrical connections between speakers and amplifier sources. It has three key electrical properties: resistance, capacitance and inductance. Resistance is by far the most important property to look at. Low-resistance wire allows more of the source’s power through to the speaker coil, meaning more power and more sound. Simple enough.

Wire material

Copper is the most widely used material for speaker cable due to its low cost and low resistance. However, copper does oxidise so it needs to be well covered and insulated. When exposed to air, pure copper reacts to creating copper oxide which covers the exposed surface; this creates a barrier between the cable and the speaker/ amplifier therefore can weaken connections. Silver is slightly less resistive than copper meaning a thinner gauge will still offer a lower resistance, however as you might have guessed silver is expensive so a thicker copper wire will actually still be cheaper to buy. Gold however does not oxidise so it can be used for open terminations but as it has a higher resistivity to copper or silver it is rarely used as speaker cable. As with all metals, the purer the wire used, the higher the cost (per metre). Many different levels of purity are available for cables, and whether or not this brings a significant benefit to the audio is down to personal preference and for you to decide for yourself.

This article comes from cambridgeaudio edit released