Lately we’ve been getting hit with the common question “what speaker wire gauge should I use” or “what matters most in high performance speaker cables”? Is there a difference between 12AWG and 18AWG wire? The short answer is Yes. The higher the gauge, the more resistance. In this case, it’s usually best to follow the advice of the Borg “resistance is futile”. Audiophiles should always wish to minimize speaker cable resistance. Read on to learn why.

More often than not, we’ve seen Audiophiles choose a higher gauge esoteric wire over a lower gauge generic zip cord cable simply because they were sold some marketing nonsense from the exotic cable vendor that their wire will yield higher dynamics and better Mojo from your system than standard generic cable. Check out some of the “midpriced” speaker cables from the likes of Audioquest and Nordost as example and you will see they are anywhere from 16-18AWG. This is much higher resistance than cheap 12AWG zip cord cables you can buy at a local hardware store.

Anytime you are driving power into a low impedance load such as a loudspeaker, the dominant metric of concern is DC resistance (measure of restriction of conductivity in a circuit). Certainly there are secondary concerns which are also important such as inductance, and capacitance. But, as we’ve proven in our various cable articles and reviews, if you cannot first select a cable with low enough DC resistance, the losses will be so great between the amplifier and loudspeaker that all other cable parameters will become a wash. This article will focus solely on cable resistance and will serve as a guide for choosing the right wire gauge (AWG) for your installation to ensure you realize the maximum potential of your setup.

This article comes from audioholics edit released