Best way to connect 2 pieces of speaker wire?
 

Hi. Is there a better way to connect 2 pieces of speaker wire than to just twist the 2 ends together and tape them? And is quality lost inevitable with piecing together wires? Thanks for any info.

solder them together

It depends on the "wire". Plain wire like speaker cable can be soldered. Covering the joint with heat-shrink tubing is a good idea. Coax, on the other hand, is a different case. You cannot successfully hand solder this and expect to get the same characteristic impedance as undamaged cable. Any change in the impedance will cause reflections and screw up the signal (analog or digital).

16-Gauge White 2-Conductor Speaker Wire to be exact.

What matters most is that the splice be sealed so that the conductor doesn't corrode. Solder the connections, and seal them in heat-shrink tubing, and you'll be fine.

RichC

Or use some cold shrink 3m makes some great stuff I use at work.

They also have the wire nuts that screw them together; I've been known to use those then electrical tape the morass over as well :).

bump


I got a big spindle of speaker wire that I was going to cut down to connect to three front speakers. the back of my receiver has those standard little red and black tabs and so on, but the spindle came with 4 nut screw things on the end, so I did a test run and pu those on there and it seemed to work. Anyway, I don't even know if I put them on right. First I split the wire about 1.5" and took off the rubber on the outside of both (about 3/4" down). then I took the bottom half of the nut thing and slid it down so that the exposed copper sticks through. there's about 1/4" sticking through, by the way. then I took the ending piece with the gold pointy tip and screwed it on.....mashing up the copper inside and then plugging that gold tip into the black or red spot on the back of the receiver. Is that right? Does that even make sense? sorry for the shitty description. thanks for reading.

Sounds like you are talking about something like this:
http://www.monstercable.com/images_d...ms_glam_tn.jpg

Is that right? Sounds like you connected them properly. A crimp like that is a cold weld and should be just fine if you did it correctly. As mentioned earlier in this thread, sealing those metal connections would be a good idea. Make sure you get the red vs black correct on both sides or a speaker could be out of phase.

yeah, I think I did it right and those are the things I'm talking about. the speakers and receiver are crap but my cell kept making them buzz due to the unprotected wiring and so on. thanks for the help :)