Resistance
Resistance is by far the most important specification of speaker wire. Low-resistance speaker wire allows more of the amplifier's power to energize the loudspeaker's voice coil. The performance of a conductor such as speaker wire is therefore optimised by limiting its length and maximising its cross-sectional area. Depending on the hearing ability of the listener, this resistance begins to have an audible effect when the resistance exceeds 5% of the speaker's impedance.
A speaker wire’s impedance takes into account the wire’s resistance, the wire’s path, and the dielectric properties of local insulators. The latter two factors also determine the wire's frequency response. The lower the impedance of the speaker, the greater a significance the speaker wire's resistance will have.
Where large buildings have long runs of wire to interconnect speakers and amplifiers, a constant voltage speaker system may be used to reduce losses in the wiring.
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Famous quotes containing the word resistance:
“Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.”
—Kingsley Amis (1922–1995)
“How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The greatest, or rather the most prominent, part of this city was constructed with the design to offer the deadest resistance to leaden and iron missiles that might be cast against it. But it is a remarkable meteorological and psychological fact, that it is rarely known to rain lead with much violence, except on places so constructed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)