Karaoke Forums

So I had an interesting experience last night. While eq'ing the rig (which entails me playing a specific track through the PA) a guy sitting up front at a table with his friends started motioning to me that he thought I should turn the PA down. I acknowledged him but really didn't change anything on the PA. The sound levels were appropriate and I think he just wasn't happy that he had to speak up to talk with his friends (well you're 8 feet from the PA, what do you expect).

So anyway later in the night, he comes up and starts looking at my rig. Starts telling me how he's a "sound guy" (his term not mine) for a band. He takes one look at my speaker cables and says to me while pointing at them "Jeeze dude, are those speaker wires or hoses? A little overkill for Karaoke don't you think?" My polite reply was something about nothing but the best for my singers and yadda yadda. Later I started wondering what others are using for speaker cable on their rigs.

The "Hoses" that freaked him out are 12 gauge 2 conductor speaker cables with NL-2 (Speakon) connectors at the cabinets. When you consider my amp pushes 600W per channel and the cables are 50' each, that is the appropriate gauge by everything I've been taught.

So my thought is this is an example of one of two things. Either the guy has never seen pro quality speaker cables and this just blew him away or this is another case of the "well it's just karaoke" syndrome. An attitude I still don't understand since in my mind, live sound is live sound and why would you have different quality standards for one type of gig over another. So anyway, I'm just looking for some perspective here (and I'm just curious about other people's gear anyway). Obviously this question doesn't really apply to those using active speakers.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

I use 12g on my every day stuff.

If I run 2 subs I use 10g.

When I'm running my large band pa my main cables are 8g.


12 g should be the standard. Or if your running 25ft you could get away with 14g

I use those hoses too. LiveWire 12 gauge speakon to banna. These bad boys are guaranteed for life, and they mean it. My cables started losing signal, and I could fix it by wiggling the bannana clip side. I didn't know that there was a screw inside the back of the bannanas that holds the wire in place. I didn't know it was there, so I never tightened them. All 4 screws were missing. I took the cables back to guitar center without a receipt. The guy there showed me what was wrong, and could have just given me the correct 4 screws, and I would have been happy. Instead he just have me two new cables. How cool is that? Obviously I now know how to maintain this cable so it won't happen again, but I got 2 new cables. You get what you pay for.

This "sound guy" sounds like he is running home speaker cables, and has no idea what he is doing. My mom's husband is a "sound guy" for a band. He doesn't know the first thing about providing a professional sound.

Felix the KJ

Overkill....not really. Karaoke gets a bad name all the time over stuff like this. I use 12ga, my newer cables are a lot bigger than my older versions. Although they are the same ga, the casing is much bigger. I also like them better, they seem to coil better and feel more professional. Only one of my three amps uses speakons, so I use all 1/4 cables, with adapters for that one....MrD

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[highlight=midnightblue]MrD - KJ/DJ Specialist
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& on myspace - larrynance[/highlight]

Primarily I use 12ga Speakon cables, but I do have 12ga 1/4" in my bags at all times. You never know what might happen at a show, having extras is always a good idea. I paid through the nose for my Speakon cables, so I hope they last a long, long time. No problems yet,,,,,knock on wood!

I agree, that "sound guy" is a retard. I have seen a lot of idiots try to do sound for weekend bands though. In my area, band sound pays more than most karaoke gigs, but about the same as ours. Idiots probably make less, but so do crappy KJs I guess.

Skimping on speaker cable is dumb anyway. A 12 gauge cable can run a really long distance without significant power loss; this is not true as you move down in wire size. I have several lengths of cables as well, so I try not to use longer ones than are necessary. 5 & 10 foot to parallel neighboring cabinets, 25 & 50 for amp rack runs. I have a mix of 1/4 and speakon in my system as my amps are all speakon-only but some of my cabinets have both, others are only one or the other. I don't know why I bought a bunch of cables with 1/4" ends instead of speakon plus adapters .. stupid thing to do; but oh well, lesson learned.

Anyone use one amp rack for each side of their front-of-house rig? I keep thinking about buying a second amp rack and a drop snake to go from the cross-over to the far side amp, but whenever I put the power and cable lengths into one of those online voltage loss calculators it does not seem to make much difference with 12 ga cable.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

I use 12 guage for most runs & have a couple 10 guage for subs when i'm really pushing the wattage.

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I use EWI 13gauge cables, 25'. I do have one 50' cable which is 12gauge. I always run mono, so that gives me plenty of length.

Then I have a couple of 50' 14ga cables I use at home or for PA/speaker gigs where I don't need much power.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Shouldn't the gauge be determined by the distance of your run? 12 gauge for 50 feet sounds right to me. I have one 4 conductor 50 foot cable for a sub that I own and that thing is a monster. It's fat and it weighs a ton.

Now that I'm using powered speakers I don't really worry too much about the gauge. I think I am running 14 gauge XLR from my mixer to my amp and the speaker on the Bose L1 attaches directly to the amp itself.

12 guage has a 9 amp capacity.. chart..

9 amp with 8 ohms is 650 watts. The resistence of 12 guage is 1.5 ohms per 1000 feet so 100 feet is only .15 ohms.

power calculator

I run line level TRS shielded There are a couple of places where I couldnt use regular speaker wire. One is on this road right by the WWV transmitter towers.

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With speaker cables, as far as I know, a bigger conductor is "never" going to hurt.


That is probably more like 20 or 22 gauge. I am not an EE, so I don't really understand the stuff my friends remark about sometimes; but as I understand a really big conductor combined with a really weak signal results in the conductor acting like a capacitor and .. something something bad to the signal. I dunno, maybe someone can explain this; or if not perhaps I will look it up when it is not 4:19 AM.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

When I first purchased my equipment I used the "Lamp Cord" 16 gauge; but after reading and learning more here about the subject;I switched all my speaker cables out to 12 gauge with speak-on connectors. I guess you could call it "Headroom" for speaker cables.

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Man Must Know His Limitations -Clint Eastwood

Wow, don't remember getting advice on what gage to use. All mine are 16. All my PAs and subs are powered. Still a big deal for speaker gage?

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

Not for powered speakers. The "skin effect" that Jeff is referring to will not happen with commercially bought XLR cables. Now if you decided to use bus bars or 8 gauge, that might be a different story.

In short, don't worry about it.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Hi guys,
I can't really equate your guage, sorry gage sizes to our cable over this side of the Pond but there really is some twaddle spouted about speaker and audio cable.

There are even people, would you believe, that think copper cable can be directional to an A.C. signal. Serious need of Psychiatric help, methinks.

Anyway, I usually use standard mains cable for speaker leads.

Standard 13 Amp continuous rating, multi-stranded.

For some sensible comment on cables, both speaker and audio interconnect, have a look here;

http://sound.westhost.com/index2.html

Lots and lots of great audio stuff, including a few rants at the stupid claims of manufacturers.

This guy has repeatedly challenged speaker and audio interconnect manufacturers to prove their idiotic claims and thus far, not one single one has accepted the challenge.

as you guys use 110 Volt mains, rather than our 230 Volt, the current rating of your mains cable should be correspondingly higher than ours, so even better for speakers, I would surmise.

Sandy