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Advice seeked from HiFi experts - Vintage Bang and Olufsen Penta - Speaker cable

Faz
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Greetings dear members,

Hope some of you can chime in. I’ll preface this post by saying that I'm not a connoisseur of the highest level but I enjoy fine sound without going balls out and buying $200 per feet speaker cable. I have a very simple, decent sounding set up (NAD + Pentas).

Mine are Penta I based on my research. They’ve been re-coned ( not sure this is the right term) and are in excellent working condition. Since we’ve moved into our new condo I'm faced with buying new cable. Any recommendations without breaking the bank? Do i go by brand? Gauge?

Thanks in advance for your guidance and suggestions!
 
Faz
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Nuts! And I thought $200 per feet speaker cable was outrageous!
 
R
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Audiophiles will complain but I use ordinary 2sq mm twin core cable ( the sort you might use for power to table lamps) for my ancient Acoustic Research speakers. I play analogue vinyl records via an analogue record deck, amplifier and speakers, all of it 45 years old except the amplifier which is only 28 after the original Trio failed. My ears are analogue too. I do make sure the connections are good, using solder to tin the ends of the multi strands to give a solid 10mm or so.

There are so many variables, shape of room, speaker position, stands or not, furniture, floor coverings, whether the curtains (drapes) are closed or open, how many people are in the room, my age which changes how I hear high frequencies, who the blue note engineer was on the day it was recoded, which edition of the pressing you have….

Paying big money for cables which might make a tiny difference to one variable seems pointless.
 
Evitzee
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R Richard_C
Paying big money for cables which might make a tiny difference to one variable seems pointless.
There is a huge cottage industry that tries to convince people that their wires somehow transport an electrical signal more purely than anybody else's due to some magic electronic alchemy in their wire configuration, purity, plugs or whatever reason they conjure up. It started with Monster Cable who made a mint on the concept, now everyone is into it; speaker cable, interconnects, power cables, HDMI cables, all are now sold with the promise that it will improve your system. And naturally the more you spend the better the results. I will spend a little on the cabling, but I don't go crazy. The manufacturers aren't using any special wires in their circuitry or speakers, but somehow that 0.5 m interconnect is going to sound better if it is a $500 cable? I won't call the industry a scam, but it is way overhyped.
 
pennsyl936
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Simple 16 gauge stranded lamp wire works just fine for me with my Anthem + Paradigm and MartinLogans.

1764450500435.webp
 
vibe
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they are not self powered Pentas? I think the earliest ones are passive. You probably can use anything not too thick. I had some of the later ones that are powered which are known as belolab pentas. They had a mono block amp in the base. They sounded quite good after woofers were refoamed {I used rubber). B&O from that era actually sound pretty good but is very difficult to work on.
 
watchmann44232
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TL;DR: Amazon Basics Speaker Cable

Sorry for directing to other forums, but I think ASR has a pretty healthy attitude on 'Hi-Fi' cables.

The USB etc. Ethernet 'Hi-Fi' cables are then of course next level - it's a digital transmission with error correction. Broadly speaking it either works, or it doesn't and adding 100000 peso 'directional' ethernet cable won't make a bit's difference.

Off-topic, but of course nowadays one could also get actual wireless speakers - no cables to worry about! 😀
 
Faz
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vibe vibe
they are not self powered Pentas?
Correct. First generation.
 
Larry S
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Go to Amazon and buy 12 gauge speaker cable .. 14 or 16 works too. You don’t need to pay huge cash for speaker cable. Interconnects are another matter but even there you don’t need to lay out huge dollars.
 
KAP
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There is a lot of hype and opinions when it comes to interconnect cables and speaker wire. For me, I think the stated benefits for the hyped speaker wire couldn’t be noticed or appreciated except with extremely high quality source components and speakers. I have a current McIntosh amp connected to mid 1990s McIntosh speakers that I am perfectly fine with using standard speaker wire and following well established guidelines based on wire gauge, maximum distance and speaker impedance. The audio signal's volume and overall quality will degrade if you use wires that exceed their recommended length.

The reference table below I got from the internet. It is populated with lengths, gauges and speaker rated ohms that I have seen as fairly uniform across various references.

1764543773544.webp

Note: AWG = American Wire Gauge, which is the US standard measure for the diameter of electrical conductors
Edited:
 
vibe
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I got the beolab pentas with these. I picked up the system from an old lady for cheap, the remote had a motor in it that articulates whether flat or vertical. I used to always have a B&O syustem lying around for fun. Have fun with those speakers, they move a lot of air.

IMG_0962.webp
 
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