voltage drop might not look like much, but remember that 200w lost is going into heating the wire, after not too long the resistance will rise, and thats where the real power loss is, short burps might not make it so obvious, at 1 ohm 70A is being pushed through that wire, the 8ga is a good bet. enjoyed the vid! good to see some numbers
The power loss is relatively small but what is more important is the heat that will develop in the thinner 16 gauge wire as compared to little or no heat with the 12 and 8 gauge wires.
For my single SA-15 V2, I did Sky High OFC 10 gauge wire from the subwoofer terminals, to Sky High OFC 8 gauge from the box (bolt) terminals, then that just goes to the (Soundqubed 1200.1 @ 1ohm) amp. Works great, wire is thick and heavy-ish
This video is great, a big factor with speaker wire is the input terminals on your subs and speakers! Always annoying to have to chop and splice speaker wire together to fit in a push terminal!
I agree with Aaron Nonya! I would like to see that same test done with the 4ga wire with the 4ga adapters! I just wonder what kind of numbers would you get!
Wow great video! I thought I’d see a much bigger difference, but goes to show with quality wire you’ll do fine. I personally prefer 12 awg just cuz it leaves some room to work with different setups. 👍🏽
I wonder what that translates to when it comes to actual db output. Be nice to see that in real time real word basis. Then do a single power and ground vs dual Power and grounds running to an amp. I love this Tech stuff nice to Nerd out on audio with y’all
I'd like to see the difference between 8awg and 4awg as many people feel the need to go to 4awg these days. There are even people starting to use 1/0awg.
I'm sorry but really what woofers could ever require 1/0ga for a freaking speaker connection??? Now that i would love to see hahaha one that actually does require that thick of wire to pass the audio signal "NOT THE 12V" people he is talking about speaker connections here and I've seen it myself too there's always the one guy at a show with freaking 8/0ga (yes i know the d-cell battery thick stuff) cut all the way around it turning the diameter down into a standard 4ga and shoves it in his woofers to connect them to his amplifier lol i mean come onnnn really??? What made you think that would be necessary or even help with anything or make.any improvements 😆 🤣 😂 Thanks for pointing this out showtime he deff should do this test (or maybe you and your new partner Exo can)
my 2 Fi subs will be receiving 10kW EACH so yea, I'd like to know if 4ga would be better than 8ga however where I think people become confused is when a power wire running 10k requires 1/0ga then why wouldn't a 10kW sub require 1/0ga.. well because the power wire is DC and the speaker wire is AC. (2 Fi Neo 4.11 each on it's own Taramps 1-ohm Bass 8K wired down to 0.7 ohm = total 20,000 RMS Watts)
@@lowhertzhighspl yeah before impedance rise lol you're going to be lucky to clamp real time power 6k from each also dependant on your battery reserves and alt/alts and quality and quantity of power runs... I myself have a Wolfram AW-9000.1D wired to half ohm on two Wolfram PT-18'S 4in PE coils 4krms each (massively underrated) and I have 3 runs of sky high 2/0 ofc front to rear with a JY 270a running the truck side and a mechman 320 charging my batteries which are under the hood I have two XS SB1000-31 supercaps and then in the rear I have a single limitless cyber 12k powering my sub amp and a reg limitless 25ah powering my AW-125.4- 4ch and I have two runs of 2/0 to the cyber and 1 run to the 25ah and my voltage hovers around 14.8 while running and then full tilt I may drop to 14.2 the lowest I've seen was 13.8 but that was because I had not charged my liths in a while and the vehicle sat parked for 2wks without being ran at all but it quickly recovered up to 14.8 thanks to them dual alts
@@foobart8746 you want a cookie bruh? Waste of good wire if it is good wire that is lol you will never need more than 8ga ofc to your subs as speaker cable and adding thicker wire actually might cause some power loss rather than give you a better connection because that's a lot of copper soaking up your audio signal...
@@Pobodies_Nerfect yeah mine was super hot and made the terminal on my box hot, I won't put in my new power wire or play the sub very loud until I get new speaker wire
Run that s#!t everywhere! I even put it on my remote turn-on wires. On the run to my power antenna. And to my tweeters. But I never did the big 3. That is superstition. :D
kicker would only come close to pyle lmao glad to see you stepped out of walmart and into the big boy world of audio, now go get a ticket from it already lol
What a job to have! even if it's only for half a day incl. editing while the other half is spent shipping out car audio orders. I'd do this for free! (Conduct car audio scientific experiments using fancy test bench)
Bro good test, but that’s just part # 1. Part # 2 should test those same gauges but with 16’ of wire. That’s about as long as you’d run in a car, but can always round it up to 20’ to cover worst case. 💪🏼
I knew that was going to jus be a little bit lower but the bigger wire will keep amp cooler bcz the amp don’t have too work so hard too push the power thru small wire
Run a 4 gauge and see if it increases any , I see a ton of installs with what people call "over kill" but is it really over kill if it squeezes out some extra watts
there is a major difference in watts let alone resistance in the aluminum and would act more like a heater at high watts or high ohms on top of the ohms resisting in the CCA its self....stay far far far away from CCA, just get OFC ( AWG ) not Ga cause Ga is china way undersized wire. the wire topic is a whole damn planet of facts Vs scams
I was hoping you would had done the single run with 8 & 12 gauge. Now I'm curious because it dropped with the 16 gauge quite a bit with that single run.
I put my money on 8ga CCA being less resistant, what quality of CCA will be a factor of course. 8ga is double the diameter of 12ga and ofc vs CCA resistance is not double (CCA around ~40% more resistant that being more along the lines of poor copper coating) as speaker wire resistance is going to truly be the determining factor as voltage and amperage without doubt both will be capable to handle comparable loads. (Down to brass tacks I do think either way in every way the CCA does hold a slight advantage though) but again that's comparing 12ga to 8ga so 🤷 price, weight and mass are weighed out in pros and cons as well. As long as all factors are accounted for I see no issue with choosing CCA, or mixing the 2. I have 1 1/0 run of each ran front to back in my set up but that was calculated and it's more than I need. I don't have the overhead I would if I choose to run 2 runs of ofc instead but i also have no problem running another run of what's needed if needed down the road to have a final result in continuing to have a fair bit of overhead. I will have plenty of supply where I'm not leaving anything on the table and wouldn't benefit in any way otherwise. If I am mistaken in anyway, well you with out a doubt would be the one to know as I do know your name and it's on my list to watch as i learn more about lithium before I decide to make the switch.
Love the tech time videos. Like to see a video of how quick those super caps can recharge while playing music. Maybe a battery, 320 alt and 2 of those ultra cap banks. See if it's good enough to power the amp or need another battery
Everything looks good except the voltage was higher for the smaller gauge wire. If the voltage stayed the same I think their would be a bigger drop in watts.
My issue is it actually justified to spend the extra money on 8 gauge wire vs 12 gauge just to gain 20-30 watts of power unless you’re running more than a pair of subs as resistance and length will affect power loss
Length, OFC/CCA not accounted for? Shorter lengths would differ less (would be my guess). Did not account for heat building up when the load is on the wire for a longer period of time.
@Stealth I know this is a year old BUT really you were using 16 ga on your subs?? That seems way too small to wire subs... What amp were you running at that time? What was the rms?
If your running below 1000 watts 16 gauge is fine. Your playing music the watts will vary. Really 18 gauge would be fine for speaker wire. Look at the speaker wire size in speaker to the voice coil. Most 800 watt rms subs hv 18-24 gauge wire.
How hot does the 16ga wire get with that much wattage? I am going to use 16ga for my tweets and 12ga for mids and 8ga for subs. I don't think you would gain any performance from 4ga on 3k
So I'm going to be running 3 soundcube hds3 10's at .67ohms and each sub should be seeing about 1100watts rms. I will be running 12awg. Should that be thick enough for be running, as I'm gonna have a hard time fitting the 12awg into the speaker terminals. Will they get to hot? I'm looking longevity and durability. If I need thicker speaker wire, what would y'all suggest for getting all that wire into the speaker terminals? Thanks for the help.
Them results only would be true if you just burped from normal temperatures in a setup you actually play as you play heat builds up and efficiently goes down so for spl burps you can get away with pretty thin wire without a huge loss but in a daily setup the more you play the more power you lose to a point were the wire in a bad case melts or shorts out or it gets to a hot resting temp and you just play with low efficiency because the more heat the more resistance I may be wrong but ain't I right?
Dang, im confused.. Ill be running upto 1400 rms and around 2500 or so max with a monoblock @1 ohm. My concern is having 4 speakers ran in series, they are 300watt rms each and 600 max, what guage should i use from the amp to the speaker and down the line and back?
These are good videos! Keep 'em coming! An idea for the future is same gauge wire but different types. Solid (like home electrical) vs. thin stranded vs. thick stranded vs. aluminum vs. OFC pure copper. Etc. Etc. Maybe even something crazy like copper tubing? Butting together many shorter pieces to make 1 longer piece? Simulate wire runs to door speakers 12' lengths.
What I did (if your on a budget like me) was make a little distribution box out of a little piece of MDF and some 1/4 in nuts, bolts and washers. I have 2, 15's dual coil. I have 8, 8gauge wires running to a 4 terminal DIY distribution box. 8, 8 gauge in and 4, 4 gauge out. I have a one channel amp with 2 pos and 2 neg inputs so it all works out nice. You can make a dis box in many different configurations. What ever works best for your set up.
I bought from sky high car audio dual 8ga speaker wire inputs to single 8ga output. I'd like to see a test done to know if even helps considering it's aluminum and small.
Flexin five has a good point... how long could you run higher volume on thinner wire with that type of power before it would get hot ? And if it gets hot would it get hot enough to fail?
With these short burst tests I didn't notice any temperature change in the wire. Sounds like I'll be revisiting this idea in the future to perform a thermal test on the wire.
I didn't know that having a thick cable from the amp to the sub box was bad. Using 0 gauge cca from amp to the box. Looks badass. Am I losing power for using it? Its about 3 ft long of cable. What's the optimum cable for 3k of power? 8 gauge?
You never need thicker than 8 gauge speaker wire and honestly that's a little much because the power coming out of ALL amps is AC voltage it's the same reason u use small wire in your house only dc has the problem of needing large conductor's to carry high current but cca wire still sucks lol
I always wondered this if you run say two 12 gauge wires instead of One 8 gauge wire would that help? So a pair of speaker wire that's 12 gauge to one speaker wire that's 8 gauge
@@nickxcaliber7991 lmao jokes on you considering that amp has put out over 5k rms on video... Before you laugh at others be sure to fact check your own ignorance prior to being the fool yourself!
Do you think that next time you can compare "regular" speaker wire to ofc speaker wire?... and just wondering why you did "uncertified" instead of "certified"?
I consider ofc (oxygen free copper) to be regular speaker wire. What other type of wire are you referring to? I chose uncertified because it will do more power and more current through the wire. It made for a better comparison in my opinion.
These were short bursts so can't say I noticed the wires getting hot. I'll likely do a future test video to check the thermal change in the wire when performing such a test.
I have two sundown x8v3 dual 4 oh. I ordered 8 gauge ofc speaker wire from down4sound and it was too thick. So I ordered skyhigh 12 gauge ofc. I need to run them in parallel from 4 ohm down to 1 ohm . I hope I ordered the right size wire. I wanted the thickest speaker wire but it's impossible to fit in the push terminal in parallel x8v3
So what AWG size of OFC speaker wire should I use to power 2 subs with 20K RMS (10K each)? 4g or 2 runs of 8g will be sufficient for SPL comps? Surprisingly I did not learn this answer from watching this video because SAU tends to cover all bases, so maybe I missed it. (If someone wants to know what subs: 2 - 15" Fi Neo 4.11 w/ Omega option and stage 3 cooling rated 5K-7K RMS which is why I will be supplying them with 10K each, which doesn't necessarily mean they will receive 10K each, thanks to factors such "Impedance Rise"). SIDENOTE: And to think, almost a year ago I watched this video to learn what size of speaker wire my single Kicker L7S 12" needed for it's speaker wires, haha, or maybe it was when I had already upgraded to 2 L7Ss but regardless, I've learned A LOT and have come a long way within the last year mainly by learning as much as I could from car audio pros via RU-vid such as this YT channel. So a big thanks to these guys. [plug] For anyone interested in seeing my previous builds or my newest builds, feel free to check out my new/small/basic YT channel where I will be uploading much more content in 2021 in hopes of passing on accurate knowledge to my fellow bass-heads. Presently am building my 5th build in one year, starting from 1K RMS, 2K, 5K, 8K, to now 20K RMS :-D
@KO Audio Midwest looks like you told on yourself... You didn't watch the full video did you? If you had you wouldn't have commented about the 2 runs of 16 ga. Go watch the video in full. (I would put a time stamp BUT that would make it too easy for you lol, yes I'm a di*k)
herbyverstink there are several brands using 4 gauge speaker outputs and I’m pretty sure sundown has 4 gauge speaker terminals on their team subs. That being said 1 run of 4 gauge looks cleaner vs dual runs of 8 gauge to your box. Personally I have 1 run of 4 gauge to my smd speaker terminal and 8 gauge to the subs inside
@@dylanantunano9761 the G2 Audio Genesys subs use 4 awg terminals & that sub is only rated at 1200 rms. Its becoming more common to see 4 awg terminals on subwoofers.
@@junioro907 not sure of your budget but can you afford the 8/0 wire? Have you seen the legit price on that 8/0, plus I think you have to order it by the spool. The one I saw you couldn't just buy per foot. Bye bye paycheck lol. (Btw I know you were being sarcastic in your comment, I'm just saying the stuff is EXPENSIVE. Seems it'd be cheaper to run multiple runs of 1/0 or even 2/0)
If your running below 1000 watts 18-12 gauge is fine. Your playing music the watts will vary. . Look at the speaker wire size from speaker terminals to the voice coil what gauge is it? Pretty small I would suspect Most 800 watt rms subs hv 18-24 gauge wire. If your running 4000 watts which is massive then yes 12 gauge. But most of y’all are wasting energy worrying about putting 4ga lol / 8ga speaker wire on a 1500 watt system.
That stinger wire 8 ga looks almost the same size as the Sundown 12ga.. I know the Stinger isn’t oversized is the sundown ? Have heard your wire is high quality ☑️
