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Is this good wire?
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 11:52 am
by Jester
A friend of mine that does church installs gave me about a 1000 ft of mini balanced wire. It says “West Penn wire CL2291 2 COND 22 AWG STD Shielded type CL2 75 C (UL)” Would this be good for a studio install? My longest runs are going to be about 40 ft.
Thanks,
Lief
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 4:30 pm
by barefoot
No, not if you want to use it as speaker wire.
The resistivity of 22AWG copper wire is about 0.0161 Ohms/ft. A 40ft run gives an 80ft round trip. So 0.0161 Ohms/ft * 80ft = 1.3 Ohms. That's way too much resistance to put in series with your speakers. I would say 0.1 Ohms is an absolute MAXIMUM for an 8 Ohm speaker. Lower is better. This means 6ft runs of your wire, max. For 40ft runs you really need 10 AWG wire. In this case, you definitely should consider moving the amplifiers closer to the speakers.
Thomas
opps
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 6:41 pm
by Jester
Sorry I wasn't clear I was going to use the wire for balanced Mic runs. Would it be alright for that?
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2004 6:51 pm
by barefoot
I don't know. It probably depends most on the type of shielding. Maybe you can contact West Penn Wire and see what they say.
Thomas