Car Speaker Wire Buying Guide

To complete your sound system and generate sound from the speakers, you will need some speaker wire. Speaker wire is used to make the electrical connection between speakers and amplifiers. Today's speaker wire is constructed of two or more electrical conductors that are individually insulated by plastic such as PVC, PE or Teflon. To determine the performance of speaker wires, there are three properties you need to take into affect which are resistance, capacitance, and inductance. A perfect speaker wire has no resistance, capacitance, or inductance. The shorter and thicker the wire is, the less resistance it will have, which means better performance. A common rule of thumb is that the resistance of the speaker wire should not exceed 5% of the rated impedance of the system. Copper or OFC (Oxygen Free Copper) speaker wire is the most popular and is more or less the universal standard, it has low resistance and is more cost efficient than other materials.