Would 12 gauge speaker wire be a good choice for my home theater?

Question

The wires that came with my Onkyo home theater are really small.

Answer 1

Go with a 16 gauge.  Unless you're running very powerful speakers, 12 gauge is overkill.

Answer 2

The guy that gave you the distance answer is the best answer.  The gauge is important depending on the lengths of the wires.

Answer 3

Depends on if the wire is copper or aluminum.  THe heavier guage the less bass you lose.  thin wire drops low frequency.  go with a heavy copper threaded wire, 12 is pretty good.  distance is also a factor.

Answer 4

There is no reason to use a 12 guage wire on a home theatre system, you're not pushing 1000 watt car subs! Stick with a good 16 gauge wire that has an all copper oxygen free braided strand, it will be more than fine. Besides, unless you want to solder the ends of the 12 gauge wire it wont fit well in the receiver or speakers. You will end up with freyed wire ends and end up damaging your equipment.

Answer 5

12 ga is what I use for all my speakers.

A speaker site (not one selling expensive copper) once recommended this guide for thickness based on run-length:

1-10 ft: 16 ga

11-20 ft: 14 ga

20+ ft: 12 ga

But buying a spool of 12 ga and using it everywhere is simple.

Good oxygen free speaker wire can be bought in spools from PartsExpress.

I actually agree that you have to be careful to not leave copper strands sticking out with thick wire. Banana plugs or pin-connectors from Radio Shack are a way to manage thick wires into barelly bigenough binding posts or spring clips.