In this video, I want to talk about audio cables. Speaker cables, RCA Cables…excuse me, I mean interconnects ;-).

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For speaker cables, low resistance is the priority and gauge (diameter) matters if the length exceeds ten feet (about three meters), for line-level unbalanced signal cables (e.g. “RCA”) the priorities are shielding effectiveness and shunt capacitance (the lower the better), so thicker is not necessarily better electrically. It should be mentioned that at the usual home stereo speaker cable lengths of under ten feet, the wire gauge is almost irrelevant — anything 22 AWG or thicker is going to sound pretty much exactly the same unless human psychology in the form of confirmation bias is involved, e.g. “I paid so much for this cable that I’m not going to admit there’s no improvement — even to myself.” As for banana plugs, if they’re not of good quality they can actually be worse than stripped wire ends on (well-tightened!) binding posts or even those dreaded spring terminals you find on low-end speakers — IOW, don’t bother with them unless you’re prepared to go for the good stuff, because their shape can give them a pretty narrow, unreliable contact area if they’re not made to the correct dimensions with the right kind of properly plated spring steel. Remember, a stripped (and preferably “tinned” with solder) wire end has only one potential failure point, while any kind of plug has at least two — one where the plug contacts the socket, and one where the conductor is attached to the plug!