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I'm about to install a system in my car. a decent system. Nakamichi HU, McIntosh 4 channel bi amping the components, 10W7 powered by a PG Tantrum 1200.1.

My question is. Do tripple shielded RCA cables matter or not? what RCA's should i be buying? cuz at a store tripple shielded cables for for about 100CDN each.

what RCA's should i be buying and where should i be ordering them from?

 
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I personally think triple sheild rcas are a complete waste of money. Thats just my opinion.

 
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RCA's do matter. Those will work well for your system. Just don't run them next to your power lead. You will be able to tell the difference between cheap RCA's and those. Triple shielded may be a bit much but that doesn't mean you shouldn't get them. It definitely won't hurt anything.

 
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Just curious, would you spend 100$ for RCA's?

NIGHTHAWK, go to Radio Shack, they have a wide variety of RCA cables. DO me a favor and dont spend more than 20$ for your cables.

 
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a properly routed radio shack rca cable wil sound equivalent to some other high end cable

 
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better quality rca will help with filtering out feed back from the alternator.

 
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i spent 50 on my 5 foot rca that good or bad ....just playing

 
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I wouldn't spend $100 on RCA's. I have radio shack RCA's used in my home theatre along with a set or monster cable RCA's that used to be in my old car and the audio from the monster cables are noticably better than the radio shack ones. That's $100 Canadian btw, still expensive though. I'm a poor college student. I don't even have RCA's in my car. I'm running the stock unit with speaker level inputs to my amp. This was the cheapest way I could put bass in my car without buying an aftermarket HU.

 
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for bass RCA's are even less of a big deal. if you're gonna skimp, do it there.

 
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Well, I am going get a 2 guage amp install kit which would include one RCA, I was planning on using this skimpy RCA for bass. But I guess i'll just properly route cheap RCA's all around.

but i really wanted to just buy one of those new JL 4 channel RCA's. hmm.

 
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if you want to buy it, buy it... i know personally that youre not wasting any expense whatsoever on that system, but if it makes you feel more comfortable, do it... personally, in the future im gonna start making my own rca cables.

 
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Be sure to post up a DIY

 
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making your own RCA cables is pretty simple. You need to buy the wiring and the connectors and a soldering iron and its pretty simple. You could probably find tips on how to do it if you just go to google and search something like making RCA Cables or something.

 
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i actually know a few competitors using cat5 network cable. the strands are sooooo tiny that its perfect for rejecting noise. smaller strands are better in rca's because theres less surface area to pick up noise and theres less loop area...

the ones ill probably make will be from cat5 cable... the ends you can buy at radioshakc, or at partsexpress.com , i believe they have phoenix gold gold plated ends for like 4 bucks a pop....

 
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yeah, I've thought of that because I'm a computer tech and I can get cat5 cable for really cheap because I buy it in bulk. Its a good idea!

 
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after doing a bunch of research...and speaking to some electronics and audio engineers here at work...shielded cables are more likely to transfer noise into your signal do to that fact the shielding may pick up noise due to the fact that your car is made of metal, and so is the rca shielding...you're safer using an UNsheilded cable...and also through various tests, done by these engineers, the difference of expensive rca's and cheaper ones are not audible to the human ear because the difference of quality comes at such low frequencies that aren't audible to the human ear

 
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I work at radioshack and have had the exact same results with cheap schoshe RCAs and RadioShack fusion (like $40 for 12 feet or something in that range)cables. My amp is a Jl 500/1 and i have 2 W3v2's. I would notice any distortion and interference but the not-shielded-like-a-panzer cables work fine.

 
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Despite what I read, the width or shielding of the RCA cables does not matter. Much more important is the length of the wire. Any wire acts like a resistor and a capacitor. The longer it is, the more it fronts like a capacitor. This means it dampens oscillatations. This equals noise. Mount the amps half-way between the HU and speakers for optimum performance (this is not possible in most cars, I realize).

This is why computers are getting smaller and smaller, for example. The faster the clock the shorter the wire connecting the CPU to the RAM. b/c the wires act like a capacitor they resist changes in voltage (this is why some people put capacitors in their car--to resist voltage drops). So a fast CPU clock is by definition quickly changing from one extreme to the other. Dropping a capacitor in parallel muddies everything up.

The other thing wires do is act like antennas. The longer the wire the more sensitive an antenna it is. This can be a source of noise in the power supply or ground. I don't have a good solution for this, but I think higher quality amps do a better job isolating the power and ground noise--keeping it from entering the speaker out signal.

I hope I explained this clearly...

 
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RCA's DO matter in a high end system. Nuff said...

If you aren't looking for superior SQ and you are just a daily listener with an average system, then don't matter AS MUCH, but they still do matter.

Signal is the most important aspect of wiring an amp. You want lots of signal and you want it to be clean. RCA's will help deliver this clean signal, high output preouts will provide the strength.