Hey all, seems like it's been a helluva long time since I've posted here, I've been longing to get back in and under my car for quite a while. I'm getting back to my system after finishing work on my brother's 4th gen finally.

Right now I'm trying to find out what everyone recommends for speaker/subwoofer wires and RCA cables. I've finished laying down all the sound-deadening material for my car and I want to get the carpet back in with the wires underneath before January if it's at all possible.

I used all my old wiring supplies on my brother's car (mainly Monster Cable stuff, which is pretty good), but mine's going to be a little more involved. Any input from people who have tried the stuff out would be greatly appreciated. Brands, lines, new stuff... anything to help me get a head start on looking. Thanks in advance!

 

From a standpoint of sound quality, use the cheapest stuff you can find. For asthetics, use whatever floats your boat.

I've used a lot of interconnects. I hate most of them. They are fragile crap that can't hold up to being pulled through an interior. Plus, if you look at these "high quality" interconnects, you'll find that it's just super thin wire with a lousy solder connection to the RCA style plug.

The cheap crap that you buy at Wal Mart at least has molded ends that don't rip off when you tug them through an interior. The wire inside isn't any smaller gauge than the more expensive RCAs.

In 99% of the installs, there is no need for shielded cables, but in some there are. In those cases, I usually use the cheap shielded Radio Shack cables that have a gray casing on them. Like most cheap rcas, the ends are molded right to the wire casing, so they are good and sturdy.

The only "revolutionary" design that has any merit is the UTP style RCA. This is an Unshielded Twisted Pair. What happens with this is that the positive and negative are twisted together, so that they both pick up the same interference. Since both the positive and negative side pick it up, it cancels itself electrically at the drain. A lot of guys make their own RCAs with Cat 5e stranded wire. One of these days I'm going to do it too. It's a simple, affordable way to get "high end" RCAs.

If you want a good quality RCA that looks really good, check out the Dayton RCAs from Parts Express. I'm using a lot of Dayton interconnects on my home stereo and I'm very happy. They cost about the same as the cheap molded RCAs do at Radio Shack, but they are very classy looking, and seem to be made at least as well as every other "high end" brand like Monster and Streetwires. Next time I redo my camaro, I'll probably either use these or make my own UTP from the Cat 5 cable.

Anyway, on to speaker wire. 12 AWG for your subs, 16 AWG for everything else is more than enough. Find the cheapest stuff you can. I either buy mine in bulk from Home Depot, or online through Parts Express.

 

Hey guy, what's with the Corvette in your sig? You had another 3rdGen before, didn't you? A 'Bird if I remember correctly. Did you sell it?

Sounds like I've been overthinking this more than a little bit. I posed the same question in the SoundDomain Install forum and a lot of the responses seem pretty brand-loyal. Knowing that you've been 'there and back' so to speak, it's comforting to know that I don't have to break the bank as far as wiring goes. I'll probably bite on the twisted RCAs 'cause I have had a ground loop problem before. Tried changing the positioning of the damn cable and power wire about three times before swapping out the one that had issues. Actually, that's the main reason I was asking about wires. I don't want to have to go through that again after thinking everything was done.

Thanks for the head's up. I'll have fewer reservations about reaching for the bargain/cheaper wiring.

 

Your RCAs have nothing to do with a ground loop, and using UTP RCAs won't fix a ground loop.

Once upon a time when I first installed my system into my first firebird, I spent money on Phoenix Gold RCAs. They let in ridiculous amounts of noise, even with the car not running. I also managed to rip the ends off a couple times. I bought more expensive RCAs from Monster, and they were noisy too unless I left their super-duper-marketing-bullsh*t grounded shield float instead of grounding it to the chassis. I've ripped the ends off of those a couple times too. Those POSs are still in the car for now, but next time I tear it apart they're coming out.

Not once have I ever had problems with cheap RCAs. No noise, ever. Never ripped an end off, ever. In my girlfriend's car, I'm running a $6 set of RCAs that includes a small gauge power line for the amp-turn on lead. That's right, I've got a 12 volt line running right along the unshielded RCAs. Guess what. They're still totally quiet.

Anyway, about my cars. I bought the corvette last summer as an upgraded daily driver to replace my 88 GTA which I still haven't managed to stick a for-sale sign into yet. Wanna buy it?

 

Fair enough, but whatever was causing the noise went away when I switched out the original RCAs that I had installed for the current set that's in there. I suppose I could have shifted other stuff around in the process of the swap, but I'd moved everything around a few times before then. I looked them over and there was no obvious damage to either the cable itself or the heads, but I didn't investigate any further by hooking them up to another part of the system. By that time I'd had enough.


I'm good... never been the biggest 3rdGen 'Bird fan (cosmetically). To be fair though, I'd take a 4thGen Firebird over a 4thGen Camaro. Anyway, I don't think I could handle two cars to play with, let alone three. Are you putting a system into the Corvette as well?

 

If RCAs made the noise go away, your noise wasn't a ground loop. Changing RCA's can't change a ground loop. A ground loop is caused by a voltage difference between the ground plane of two components.

Anyway, the corvette came with some blown JL coaxes, a 5 channel eclipse amp and an eclipse head & changer. I added a pair of 10W0s for now, but hopefully over the winter I'll start working out the new setup. I'm going to build a new pair of 2-ways for the front, and either replace the W0s or at least build a nicer enclosure for them. The pre-fab wedge box in there now takes up too much space. I'm also hoping to replace the Eclipse deck with an alpine with XM, and get that junk amp out of there for something that actually works.

 

Misuse of terminology, my mistake. I'll just call it "interference". It was a whining noise that was present even when the engine was off, but seemed to get worse with the RPM. Seemed to me like the characteristics of a ground loop, but I guess it could have been incidental.

You're going to build your own 2-ways? From the ground up or are you building off of an existing woofer and tweeter? All power to you guy... is it just a lot cheaper or do you end up with higher quality in the end?

 

I'm not building my own drivers. You can't do such a thing with any sucess due to the unavailability of parts in small enough quantities. However, there is a huge DIY market for speakerbuilding, and a huge availability of drivers.

If you can properly build a crossover, you can get results that rival speakers costing many times more than your own investment, but, getting the crossovers right takes a lot of skill and a lot of trial and error. I've only built a couple pair of speakers, but soon I'm going to be getting all of the measuring equipment so that I can have all the tools necessary to properly design and test my crossovers and speakers.

 

Man I hate those cheap ends on cables. But even the molded on end ones arn't all that great. I find they dont hold on to well and easily pull out. I don't like the quality of any 15' cable less then $20ish.

I agree UTP is probably the best.

 

i use tsunami i beleive that is how you spell it just the plain jane black and red molded ends and **** if you really care about what it looks like twisted rip the two cables apart and hookl em up to a drill and twist ema that is all those other companies do and then they put an extra sheeth on them

 

I toyed with the idea of designing a crossover for subwoofer that I put in my home audio system. Didn't building the woofer myself, just used a JL 12w3 D4 and wired it so that the two voice coils are powered by a seperate channels on my sub amp. Borrowed a couple of books on crossover building from the library and decided against it... didn't mind the soldering or components involved, but getting the number of coils right seems a little too tricky to attempt for someone with only a very basic grasp of electrical applications. I was afraid that I'd end up sending a 10khz signal through my sub after putting in all that work.

I ended up using an old 12volt Acoustic crossover that was lying on the shelf from a previous install, just hooked it up to a power converter. Kinda lame, but I know my limits

Anyway, saved a lot of coin on the wiring portion of the install . There's a whole bunch of fairly cheap UTP type RCA's out there... pretty much got to pick and choose (Justins86bird: I did go well under $20 on every pair though. Guess I won't know for sure about quality until they arrive). Now all I have to do is wait for the stuff to get here and lay it down so I can put my carpet back in. Much appreciated, Jim.

 

I'm glad to see we have sane and rational people here on TGO!

Jim, I couldn't have said it better myself!

My answer is about the same.....what ever I pick up first!



Check these discussions out on other audio forums...It tends to be a very heated debate at times.

Don't try to correct those people though, they truly believe the 'cosmic lunar space time continuem inductive windings' in Monster's premium cables provide the cleanest audio signal transmission possible.

CAT-5 is a great premade UTP for RCA's. The only suggestion I would have there is to use the soft strand, since the solid wire might be too stiff for use in an automobile, it could break if it's moved enough.

 

If you think it's bad in the car audio world, you should listen to some of the home audio guys. Fricking nuts. They'll sit there all day and tell you how good their cables sound, that this cable is more liquid and transparent than that cable, blah blah blah.

One of these days I'm going to develop a speaker wire built of only the finest hand-harvested indonesian copper, spun by vestal virgins during the proper phase of their menstrual cycle, and wrapped with only the finest rubber coverings, harvested from tender rubber sapling trees from a controlled nurturing environment.

Either that or repackage the home depot sh*t with the description above written on the package.

 

 

Couldn't be more true. I was never overly concerned about cables/wiring before stumbling into the world of home and portable headphones. Every company out there seems to be equally concerned about the dynamics of the cable they make as they are about the rest of the headphone construction. And cable upgrades are one of the first modifications that people make to their own sets. It often costs just as much as the headpone itself, and these freakin' things are only like 4-9 feet long. We're talking hundreds of dollars for a DIY swap using a prefabricated cable (I don't know how much it costs when more DIY fabrication is done, but it still ain't pretty).

But on reputable sites like Head-Fi.org, everyone to the last person swears by the changes... so much so that there's not even a debate. But they'll talk about how one cable colours the sound a certain way or brings out the highs/bass or whatever. They even talk about matching the headpone to the right headphone amplifier (that generally come without a crossover, no less), when my understanding was that power is power and the amp doesn't affect the sound save for THD, and even that is debatable if you follow Richard Clark's amp challenge.

But yeah, against my better judgement, I got caught up in the hype of the Holy Grail effect of cable due more to the Home Audio world. And while I could never justify the hundreds of dollars on some of the stuff out there, I did become a lot more willing to drop an extra $10-15 on RCA upgrades to get something 'better'. A lot of it is just the fear that I could spend all my time on a more involved install than I've done before only to have the @#%*&! cables, of all things, become the weak link in the chain.

Still, in the back of my mind it felt 'wrong', which is why I posted here. And, thankfully, clearer heads prevailed. People on this site have got me out of a lot of jams in the past; I've found that most of the posters 'in the know' on the Thirdgen.org boards are a lot more practical and speak from experience rather than hearsey. The only trick is finding them

 

I get a kick out of how completely convinced those people are in what they hear. What's completely stupid is that plenty of them will make ridiculous claims that the differences are drastic.

The day that one of those morons can prove to me with an oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, or with any other piece of test equipment that the waveform is in some way altered enough to cause even .1dB of difference, I'll eat my own ***.

 

a couple good places for interconnects are dayton (as jim mentioned), knukoncepts, and anything from the seller "thestereodirect" on ebay (its the parent company of mtx getting rid of all their old inventory for dirt cheap).

 

That has to be on my top 10 list of the funniest things I have ever read on the internet. LOL

 

Yeah, I did the Ebay thing for most of it. I found Knuconcepts (where I was originally headed) was a bit pricier than most of the other stuff out there. Got some Stinger RCAs that were being firesold and some cheap EFX gear. Some of that Dayton stuff was pretty impressive looking, had the polished gunmetal look on some of the ends. Not overly concerned about the looks though... if the install goes as planned, the wires will not be a major factor, so I skipped trying to buy matching sets in favour of cheapness. Missed out on the MTX stuff though... good find.


Without any real effort, I could link a couple of dozen threads on the Head-Fi site proclaiming that their cable mod has audibly improved the sound quality of their headphones. That's pretty drastic to say the least. Funny though... for all they spend on headphones, cables, and headphone amps, I have never found a thread documenting the science to back it up. Safe to say that an audible difference would "probably" show up on an oscilloscope

Of course, some of the more technically proficient members of that forum tend to be the ones offering their own cable upgrade service to other members. Maybe not in their best interests...

 

I would NEVER buy for them again. They Just F'ed me on a 1000' roll of wire. Said it was 14 gage, when I got it and it's 16 gage. Now the price was good even for 16ga, but that NOT what I ordered. And now their telling me they never had any three conductor 14ga, but that's NOT what they said when I made the order. NEVER again will they get one red cent from me.

 

i had good luck with both orders i recieved from them. for a total of $40, i recieved 12 pairs of 3' rcas and 12 of the very nice battery terminals (silly me only bought the ground ones, neglected to notice the difference in size). however, the terminals alone were around $20/ea at stereo stores (oh, and anyone looking for inexpensive nice terminals, lemme know). i'm more than happy to deal with them again. sometimes there are mix ups though.

on that note, check to see what the auction page showed and link them to it as well. they do a good job of giving as much info as possible.

 

I used stinger wires.

 

I'm just going eat it. Gave most of it to my father, he's into model trains so it will be great for him, he's got a 25'X30' yard so he can use it. That post was so strong as I had just gotten off the phone. I can't find the page and didn't print the page, not much to do at this point but move on. That's life......

 

he told me this when i asked about the q-logic kicks... i think thats the funniest thing ive read online.

 

He said the vestal virgins line before, too. And it still works.

I use Monster cables for my home audio stuff, but I umm... didn't pay for them. I'm definitely interested in this CAT5 trick. I think I'll try that.

 

You should sell it under the name "Placebo Audio", or some anagram like Copabel Audio. I'll bet you're right and the perceived quality gain is all in their head. And don't think it's an accident that Evian water is NAIVE spelled backwards.