Question about thicker wire size for loudspeaker

9AWG wire (8 mm diameter) is nonsense inside a home/HiFi speaker cabinet.
9 AWG (American Wire Gauge) is about 3mm (.1144 inch) diameter for the wire itself, jacket size varies considerably.
8mm wire diameter would be around AWG "0" (1/0) "One Aught", generally used for arc welding, household mains power connections and the like.

Screen Shot 2024-04-23 at 3.48.52 PM.png

That said, 9AWG is still more than needed for any short speaker hook up.

I've used 10AWG for 120 foot (~37meter) 2 ohm speaker runs, and it was on the light side for performance (but heavy to coil up..), but the 14AWG internal cabinet wiring was plenty.
 
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The standards are mm2 and AWG. Diameter in mm is not normally used for conductors and wiring when looking for electrical characteristics
Kind of says itself once you encounter sectoral conductors (triangle" shaped), that is fairly common in larger sizes.
8 AWG about equal to 8mm2 in conductor cross sectional area.
 
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Weird.
I do not use AWG at all (in fact I hate that scale), being a dyed in the wool Metric, so I used an online calculator.

https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/wire/awg-to-mm.html

Which gave me:
Screenshot_20240424-013419.png

WTF?
I trusted it because first I had checked the only AWG value I know by heart, since it's so widely used, 18AWG which is almost exactly 1mm (now that is a nice round number 😄)
It gave me what I expected:
Screenshot_20240424-014440.png

That said, I trust you of course.

Now I am thinking maaayyybbbee I didn't fully reset some earlier calculation or something similar and calculator spit some old number it had in memory.

Well, 3mm is more reasonable, in any case still too thick for my taste.
Thanks
.
 

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The standards are mm2 and AWG. Diameter in mm is not normally used for conductors and wiring when looking for electrical characteristics
Same here, but as you can see, that is the first value calculator spit out, so I used it.
Oh well 😄

Next time I will use my old trusty slide rule.
Only half kidding, dedicated "electrical" slide rules include AWG conversion and a ton of other useful data 🙂
 
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9AWG wire (8 mm diameter) is nonsense inside a home/HiFi speaker cabinet.
9 AWG would be appropriate for a 50 A continuous load... meaning 50 amps RMS for hours at a time... That would be an impressive woofer that could survive that.

The difficulty routing and restraining such thick wire inside a cabinet is painful to think about. It just creates a lot of unnecessary problems. Yes, it is nonsense.

https://www.parts-express.com/Audte...kup-Wire-Red-Black-500-ft.-101-262?quantity=1
Lately I have been using this wire, and I like it a lot. 16 ga twisted pair red/black.

j.
 
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The wood vendor has just told me their Bamboo board isn't really a plywood, it is actually as n annexation of small pieces of bamboo and turned into a larger board.
Are you hesitant about using the bamboo board? I've used 3/4" thick bamboo board on several speaker builds and like it very much. It machines nicely and can be finished either naturally or with stain. There is a 3-ply type of bamboo with a fairly thick center core that's not, but the outer two parts are pretty thick too. My current build has a solid 3/4" thick bamboo baffle and the rest of the cabinet is 18-mm Baltic birch plywood that I've applied bamboo veneer to.
Paul
 
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Are you hesitant about using the bamboo board? I've used 3/4" thick bamboo board on several speaker builds and like it very much. It machines nicely and can be finished either naturally or with stain. There is a 3-ply type of bamboo with a fairly thick center core that's not, but the outer two parts are pretty thick too. My current build has a solid 3/4" thick bamboo baffle and the rest of the cabinet is 18-mm Baltic birch plywood that I've applied bamboo veneer to.
Paul

Are you hesitant about using the bamboo board? I've used 3/4" thick bamboo board on several speaker builds and like it very much. It machines nicely and can be finished either naturally or with stain. There is a 3-ply type of bamboo with a fairly thick center core that's not, but the outer two parts are pretty thick too. My current build has a solid 3/4" thick bamboo baffle and the rest of the cabinet is 18-mm Baltic birch plywood that I've applied bamboo veneer to.
Paul
Here are the bamboo board from the supplier, and they claimed that those are not bamboo plywood but bamboo annexation.

Can I have it for speaker cabinet?
 

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The big measurement for speaker wire should be ohms per foot (or other unit you use to measure wire length). With that you can calculate damping factor (assuming high damping factor from the amp) for a certain length.

Converting wire size to ohms per length will let you calculate the effects of any length of wire.
 
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I used some very thick cable for my active speakers. It was and remains a pain in the neck to work with. I will be using MUCH slimmer wire next time. I have two types of thick wire and the more flexible one is much nicer to work with. I’m damn sure there is no audible benefit over that short distance.
 
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...those are not bamboo plywood but bamboo annexation. Can I have it for speaker cabinet?

The bamboo amalgamation looks like the blockboard which is commonly made from ordinary wood (see image below).

Blockboard is not recommended for speaker cabinet construction as it often contains voids (empty spaces).

There is a possibility that your bamboo blockboard may also contain voids. You would have to do some investigative surgery on a sample.

1713980767884.png
 
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Here are the bamboo board from the supplier, and they claimed that those are not bamboo plywood but bamboo annexation.

Can I have it for speaker cabinet?
I think they have a point.

Plywood is made out of HUGE (many meters long, up to 5 or 6 meters wide if they want to) very thin (1-2 mm thick) wood sheets "shaven" from huge tree trunks, sandwiched and glued together.

Physically impossible if you start with bamboo.

So only option left is to crush it into larger or smaller bits, I am thinking pencil size at best, and press/glue them together.

IF they call that "plywood" it's an unfortunate choice.
If they aim at that market (I guess they do), they should have called those boards "plywood substitute" or "equivalent".

In fact, the proper name would be "bamboo chipboard", only the word chipboard carries a stigma 🤷🏻

But "aggregation" means the same, so.....

Or they could have called it "bamboo OSB" .... almost as bad.