Is high quality CAT-5 ok to wire surround sound speakers to the receiver?
Get some 16 gauge speaker wire. If you are going more than say 40 feet go with 14 gauge. DONT BUY NAME BRAND CABLE!!! It is BS. Google it and you will find scientific tests showing there is no audible diference between a 50 cent a foot wire and a 3 dollar a foot cable. As long as you use a low enough gauge wire you will not lose any sound quality. BTW if you use cat5 it will probably catch on fire so unless you hate your house don't use that.
Noooo! Bad idea! Cat 5 is telecommunications wire, and typically designed to carry high frequency, low voltage, low power signals (i.e., network data). There are also typically four pairs of wire twisted at different numbers of turns per foot under that pretty blue jacket. These factors combine to make cat 5 a reeeally bad choice for speaker wire, and if you have big juicy amps, it might even burn your house down when it goes white-hot and sets itself on fire. If ya gotta go cheap, use 18 guage zip cord, which is insulated much better and has lots of copper strands to carry power. It usually has some marking or pattern on one side so you can keep your polarity (+ and -) straight. That's vital because your bass and your surround sound accuracy will be way bad if you get some of your speakers hooked up backwards. This may sound a bit whacked, but a good rule of thumb is to spend about 20% of the value of your gear on cables- they carry the information that eventually hits your ears as sound waves- and if any set of connections is bad, you lose quality and impact before you ever even hear it. It's tragic. If you don't believe this, go to a decent A/V store and do blind tests with good gear and different interconnects and speaker cables. It makes a difference- which is why I make my own interconnects...buts that's another question. Hope this helps.
Do not use cat5 wiring. Yes it will transmit the sound but the wires gage is too small. It is also solid core wiring. Solidcore wiring is not the best for speakers. Use a good quality oxygen free copper speaker cable around 16 gage up to 50 ft. If you have 100 watts/channel or more you should use a 14 gage wire. If you are over 150watts/channel use 12 gage. Remember the wire gets bigger as the gage goes lower.12 gage wire is thicker then 18 gage wire. I personally like the Moster XP brand of speaker cable. it is not that expensive. Sometimes moster cable can be overpriced but not so much in the case of this wire. It is very flexible and will layout nice on the floor. I have purchased wire in the past that was similarly priced and it was garbage. The 20% rule stated above is indeed whack as I would have been spending $2,400 on speaker cables. NOT GONNA HAPPEN. About a $1 to $2 per foot is resonable. You will get a more than adequate wire for that price. That is about what the Monster XP cable I use costs. But copper is expensive now so the cost may be higher.
No. CAT 5 is made for data transfer and not for something where interferences are likely to cause trouble. I would recommend using speaker wire, and only speaker wire. Speaker wire contains more stands or finer wire. This reduces the rick of line static and feedback to generate. Also, the insulation on speaker wire is much better than that of CAT 5.
Unless your making up for some deficit in an esoteric 5000 dollar amp, with strange damping circuitry requirements monster cable is a huge waste of money. 14 Gage is fine, LAN cable is not and is not meant for the purpose. I went out and bought a pair of huge monster cables, that reminded me of nothing less than heavy duty house wire, which, by the way is much cheaper. Found it 1. incompatible with anything but banana plugs, which, 2 were not supplied but offered at even further ridiculous prices, 3. were not compatible with standard receiver outputs or speaker inputs until quite recently, 4. made no perceptible difference over a good run of litz wire, 5 are largely retailed to rubes and aficionados to show off their wallets, and a handful of professionals with particular matching problems with hyper sensitive gear. If you've got an extra hundred bucks, invest it in your amp or speakers instead.
