Whats in a cable?

[swiftone 10+ year member]

having a +/- backwards on a speaker

Alright, so how can I tell if its out of phase or if its my RCA cables (Besides changing the cables and seeing if it fixes the problem)

 

[DiamondFanatic 10+ year member]

generic cables are fine unless your wires are tie wrapped to high tension power lines, in which case you'de better rethink your situation anyways. The signal voltages used by audio equipment are well over the voltages you would pick up from running a normal cable, let alone a shielded one.
buy monster cable!!!(not) haha sorry i used to work for circuit city, they were always pushing us to sell monster cable cuz they made a lot of profit off it. We wern't even supposed to show them the cheapie cables unless they outright refused to buy monster cable. The sad truth of it is, monster cable is a complete ripoff but we still got 4/5 of people to buy it.

Do you have any idea how much profit is in the cheaper wiring kits? Should be the same profit margin as monster cable... At least I know the margin on xScorpionx and Stinger are the same... It's just called an upgrade sale, same thing as stepping them out of whatever 100$ deck you over there at Circuit City have and into a 300$ one...

Sorry for the off topic, but getting back to wiring my personal opinion is that I would rather have RCA cable of the twisted and sheilded variety, even just knowing that theoretically it picks up less noise. I do think it is all relative to how much you have invested in the rest of the components of your system to a certain extent though. If it's for your subs, it is less of a big deal how nice the cable is then if it is for your mids and highs.

In power wire I think there is a large difference though, generally a more expensive cable is more flexible which makes it easier to install, has a better strand count, and is less prone to corrosion.