Speaker Wire and lower cost phono plugs perhaps interconect wire.

Now I am in the position to build a new system I am looking at wires to join the lot together, so I was looking at various wires to try out not silly priced ones though. There is the Van Damme Blue that looks promising and I have some Silver plated Van Damme microphone (I Think) wire to try but are there any similar priced wires worth a try? The speakers will be active and I am looking at running the wire from the driver to the amp with no break. I see a few here are keen on the Klotz wires so I will give those a try and then what are decent but not over priced plugs to terminate them with. It has been so long since I had a proper stereo that I am well out of the loop as to what are the good options.

Van Damme blue 2.5mm. Always a go to in my experience.

You say speakers are active but you're wiring them to an amp? Or do you mean the speakers will be active when wired to the amp? Apologies if I'm missing something here?

Anyway back to the VD Blue:

Some people don't really rate it, in my system it does everything I want it to very well and you'd have to spend 5 fold for not a lot of improvement in my opinion. I've tried 4 and 6mm version and couldn't detect any worthwhile improvement.

Get it terminated well with spades/banana's (as you require) and only revisit speaker cable when you've got a load more spare cash!

Of course there's some other decent stuff out there at the price, which I'm sure others will recommend, but I've tried a lot of it and for the money the VD cannot be beaten IMO.

Speakers will have a cross over before the power amps then each driver will be wired direct to the corresponding amp so the cable will be wired to drive units and then to 4mm plugs to the amp terminals. When finished the wire will be permanently encased in the loudspeaker box so I intend to test a couple of cables before doing so. I found Van Damme to be plenty good enough wire and to be honest the cost of anything really better is just silly money, the setup I had 20 years ago was wired with their wire mostly and even trying more expensive cables to my mind did not bring around changes in line with the price.

Ah okay, gotcha.

Sounds an interesting setup and like I say I would go VD all the way as its so cheap you can experiment. I like the idea of replacing the internal speaker wire with the same stuff as the speaker cable from the amp. Makes more sense to me rather than having different materials carrying the signal (no matter how exotic/expensive one may be!).

I'm toying with the idea of getting rid of the binding posts altogether and going straight from the output transformers of the amp to driver using the same cable.

Good luck Alex.

Seems you can keep the run small - perhaps put the power amps next to each speaker.

Yes I aim if possible to have as short a run of cable that can be done, I have tended to build mono amps in pursuit of this as it is far easier to drive a line level signal than one to the speakers.

What form will the crossover be Alex?

The aim is to make a passive of some sort, if I can find inductors that fit the right parameters I will do one at line level. The next option is a passive with just capacitors and resistors that I think should work but if not a traditional active. There is a fair bit about them on DIY audio and I have done variants of the passive line level before and they worked very well, the pre amp without a low pass is capable of driving a video signal through a 300m drum of cable with no noticeable losses.

FWIW, when I was using the VD Blue, lots of folks were telling me that the Hifi range was better cable.

Now I’ve been using it for a good few months, I have to agree, so if you haven’t bought the Blue yet, get the Hifi cable.

The nicest stuff I have heard recently was the Chord Shawline X at the HIFI show. It is probably more than you are looking for at £30/ metre but I was impressed and preferred it to their next one up at £60.

I am thinking about trying it in preference to my 4mm t&e biwired with VdH CS122.