Tips on Buying a Subwoofer Cable Interconnect

If you are serious about home theatre, then you will undoubtedly have a subwoofer in your setup. There's nothing like the rumble of bass making the furniture, walls and windows shake as you watch a movie or listen to music.

A subwoofer is the part of the system that takes care of the lowest bass frequencies in any soundtrack. You will notice that the speaker is much larger than your satellite speakers. This is because bass uses a bigger wavelength. The lower the sound, the bigger the wave. The surface area of the speaker allows the subwoofer to vibrate sufficiently at these wavelengths to produce the bass. A working subwoofer will take the pressure off the satellite speakers as they aren't generally designed to handle low frequency waves.
When shopping for a home theatre it's all too easy to get caught up with the big shiny boxes and pretty lights. It doesn't matter how much money you spend on your hardware, as with any system it is only as strong as its weakest link. In the case of home theatre that link can often be the cabling.

Any speaker cable, no matter how cheap, will transfer the audio signal to your subwoofer. It will produce sound, but not necessarily the best sound. Neither will it carry faithfully transfer all of the frequencies. If you are using cheap cables, there is a good chance that you are missing out a lot when listening, especially if you use DTS, Dolby Digital or any of the other surround sound soundtracks. It makes sense to accompany a high quality system with high quality cabling. On the other hand, it isn't worth spending a disproportionate amount of money on cabling, as the attainable benefits can only be so much.

So How Much Should I Spend on Cables?
A good rule of thumb is to spend no more than 10% of your total system budget on cabling. This includes all of your speaker wires – including the subwoofer cable interconnect. After all, the subwoofer carries the lowest and smallest bandwidth signals in the system - so there is no need to spend a fortune.

Coax cables are ideal for subwoofer cabling. Coax has a thick copper core and a thinner copper sheath which protects the signal from RF (Radio Frequency) and EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference). There are coax versions of the cable available with RCA connectors at either end, which are the most commonly used connectors.

So, my advice would be to go for a single coax cable of a decent thickness to connect your subwoofer to a home theatre system. A good quality cable with secure, tight connections should cost no more that $15-20 for 3 meters (10 feet). I suggest something of similar thickness to your cable TV coax cable. In fact you can actually use CATV cable because it is shielded from RF interference and has a thick copper core. You can actually make your own with spares from Radio Shack or somewhere and a pair of wire snippers.

There are many boutique cable offerings in the market at the moment which may or may not make a difference to speakers, and may or may not make a difference to subwoofers. Many seem to be priced exorbitantly high when compared to the cost to manufacture the cables. I am personally a little skeptical about some of the expensive brands and their claims, and so I have gathered a handful of subwoofer cables together and will be doing a full subwoofer cable shoot-out in the weeks ahead.

Conclusion
Although I have advised against spending a fortune on a subwoofer cable, it is certainly worth investing your money in a decent cable. It will carry a cleaner signal that will prevent any RF or EMI interference from spoiling the quality of the sound. If you are spending your hard earned dollars on a decent system, the least you could do is spend a few more to connect it properly.