I have been scouring the pages in the Cables section of this site, as also the wider landscape of the Interweb to discover a reliable method of selecting Speaker wires to make my set up even better sounding if possible. I am beginning to suspect I am chasing a vapour.
Beyond the flowery language used by manufacturers and a number of “satisfied buyers’ reactions there seems to be little or no way to judge and select. I suspect manufacturers may be a bit biased.
But I did discover that:
The one or two meters of wire matters specially with regard to the conductor - Copper, Tinned copper, OFC all have good electrical conductivity for the price. Silver is considered to be better by some for a higher price. Then Gold…Aluminium is looked upon with disdain. But with regard to differences SQ between them it’s all very subjective opinions, even if multimeter measurements are different.
Is lower resistance in speaker wires better for audio? (If so thicker is better and shorter length is better) Or the converse…
A lot of discussions are available on the topic of terminations, Gold seems to be a favourite (plated) This is strangely irrespective of the material used in the speaker binding posts or Amplifier output sockets.
Incredible amounts of money are spent by some on speaker wires alone. They seem happy. There is a big industry producing highly engineered and variously shielded speaker wires using copper, gold, silver or a mix of these. Aluminium is shunned.
Some contrarians are using Finolex and similar brands of electrical copper wires and seem happy too.
But I am not able to find any authoritative guidance on how to select/ choose.
So do I test speaker cables objectively with a multimeter and accept that any method that involves my ears to compare speaker wires is subjective, unreliable and non replicable?
I sometimes think I can hear a difference between two speaker wires (on the same set up, same song, volume etc) but I can not even start to decide which one is better. It then comes down to the one that looks better
How did you select the speaker wires you are currently using?
What did you consider while deciding?
How satisfied are you with these wires?
Beyond the flowery language used by manufacturers and a number of “satisfied buyers’ reactions there seems to be little or no way to judge and select. I suspect manufacturers may be a bit biased.
But I did discover that:
The one or two meters of wire matters specially with regard to the conductor - Copper, Tinned copper, OFC all have good electrical conductivity for the price. Silver is considered to be better by some for a higher price. Then Gold…Aluminium is looked upon with disdain. But with regard to differences SQ between them it’s all very subjective opinions, even if multimeter measurements are different.
Is lower resistance in speaker wires better for audio? (If so thicker is better and shorter length is better) Or the converse…
A lot of discussions are available on the topic of terminations, Gold seems to be a favourite (plated) This is strangely irrespective of the material used in the speaker binding posts or Amplifier output sockets.
Incredible amounts of money are spent by some on speaker wires alone. They seem happy. There is a big industry producing highly engineered and variously shielded speaker wires using copper, gold, silver or a mix of these. Aluminium is shunned.
Some contrarians are using Finolex and similar brands of electrical copper wires and seem happy too.
But I am not able to find any authoritative guidance on how to select/ choose.
So do I test speaker cables objectively with a multimeter and accept that any method that involves my ears to compare speaker wires is subjective, unreliable and non replicable?
I sometimes think I can hear a difference between two speaker wires (on the same set up, same song, volume etc) but I can not even start to decide which one is better. It then comes down to the one that looks better

How did you select the speaker wires you are currently using?
What did you consider while deciding?
How satisfied are you with these wires?