Importance of "Marine" rated wire

[Timmy!]

Nice video, Phil! Pretty amazing to see the voltage drop. Also interesting to see the amps power drop due to the voltage drop.

[.NOBODY]

In my opinion, marine grade wire plus soldering is the only way to go, salt or fresh water.

I'm completely redoing my stereo wiring and you bet I'm using tinned coated copper.

Look at the factory OEM speaker wiring and guess what....it's tinned coated, soldered and I've never had an issue (7 years later in salt environment).

Do it right, do it once or dont do it at all.

[mls6722]

We have done testing and there is a video we have done that shows you can lose significant amounts of power output due to voltage drop in CCA wire. Let me find it.


Here is a good video showing the test rig our tech team developed. The two guys in the video are not Kicker employees, but they are Kicker dealers. Here is their vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH7s18qn2LE

I am sharing this one because this video goes through and shows the time component and how the internal resistance causes wire to heat, and heat differently. Bottom line, CCA works, but you get less power out of the amp due to the fact that you have a greater voltage drop between the amp and the battery. Obviously, with shorter cable runs, you will see less voltage drop...

Keep in mind, we often listen to tunes while parked in party cove. When sitting without the motor running you will be at battery voltage, not charging voltage. Based on the measured voltage drops shown in this video, it is conceivable that you could have your stereo cutting out due to under-voltage conditions at the amplifier terminals, simply because you are using CCA cable instead of real-deal copper wiring. There is a real difference, and as you see in this video, copper is demonstrably better.

Phil
Kicker

My original question was on the speaker wire. I am interested if the copper coating helps the performance in AC which I believe is more prone to travel on the skin of the individual strands.
Power to my AMPs is 10 feet 1/0 copper welding cable to a distribution block with 2-3 feet of 4AWG to each amp. Oh, and I didn't coil my power wire - That video is a pretty bad representation of heating. Not a good idea to coil the power feeders.
I agree that you would be crazy to use CCA power unless you double the size.
Interesting that large commercial aircraft for weight reasons use aluminum power feeders from the engine generators to the EE bay power panels and run them with spacers in the 3 wire bundle to allow air circulation. 90 KVA 3 phase 115 VAC 400 Hz with less than 1/0 wire.