Customer Reviews

Acoustic Research PR361 Speaker Cable, Flat 16 AWG, (50 ft spool)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I uploaded a photo to the gallery above comparing the Acoustic Research PR361 to regular 16AWG cable and in-wall 16AWG cable. As you can see, the Acoustic Research cable isn't really much thinner than regular 16AWG cabling. However, the benefit comes from the flat, rectangular shape of the cable that makes it much easier to lay across a living room floor and under a rug without curling or twisting up. It also feels a bit heavier than regular cable so once you lay it out, it'll stay put better than lighter cables.

Pros:
- Flat, rectangular shape is much, much easier to work with because it doesn't twist up as easily.
- Feels a bit heavier than regular cable so it'll stay put once you lay it out.
- Despite being a "special" thin cable, it's actually cheaper than the regular cables that you'll find at brick & mortar stores.

Cons:
- Not wafer thin like I had hoped, but still good enough.

Exactly what I expected, a roll of fairly flat speaker cable for running under carpet, etc. I ran it under an area rug across our living room for rear speakers and it does not create a noticable bump. The cable is probably about 1mm thick.

Great wire. As mentioned before, relatively flat. At $24, $6 cheaper than RadioShack. I installed laminate flooring and decided to run this across the room for surround sound. Worked perfectly, flat enough where it can't be felt. Perhaps a very high gauge, supercheap speakerwire would've work as well, but this is good quality wire.

Very nice product, thin and flat, fits under carpet, on baseboards, is paintable, and has the + side clearly marked. Description says 30, 50, and 100 ft. spools come with pin connectors, but I ordered a 50 ft. spool, they were missing, returned it and got a replacement. No connectors again! Had to buy my own connectors and solder them on. Aaside from this it works great with my hi-def system.

I had 2 problems with the wires that came with my speakers (Onkyo SKS-HT540 7.1 Channel Home Theater Speaker System):
1) They were not long enough to run along the edges of the room from my receiver to behind the couch (had to run straight across the floor instead and try to hide with area rug).
2) They were black with a colored stripe and quite noticeable against the walls.

I live in an apartment, so opening walls to run hidden cables is not an option. I was looking for a cable that was white and would be inconspicuous running up white walls to the speakers.

So let's discuss the two features that this cable advertises about itself: color and flatness. I'm not going to address sound quality in this review for a specific reason: I used the original cables to run along the edges of the room, and spliced these in just for the run up the wall. I will say that the sound quality is no worse than when I was using just the provided cables running under the carpet.

Color: Not really white. They are actually a very pale beige color. They are noticeable against my walls, but don't draw too much attention to themselves. I also only tacked them down at the base of the wall, so the shadows they are casting don't help with the concealment either. Again, since this is a rental, I hesitate to use glue to hold them tight against the wall. The packaging says that the casing is paintable, I have not tried this yet.

Flatness: As other commenters have pointed out, these cables are *flat* NOT *thin*. They are about the same thickness as regular cables, but about 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) wide. This width means that they do not twist and kink up the way normal cables do. The width does make them less noticeable in same cases, since the thickness is spread out over a larger area.

Final notes: One side of the cable is marked with grey +++ symbols to denote the positive wire. If you are running it up the wall like I did, make sure you look at your speaker connectors and plan accordingly so that the unprinted side of the cable faces the room. On one of my speakers I wasn't paying enough attention and got it backwards. I had to twist the cable behind the speaker, the wide thickness of the cable does not make this easy. Also, since the wires are encase in rectangular sheaths, a standard wire stripper will not work. I had good results just slicing down the center of each sheath with an x-acto, prying the wire out, and then cutting off the unused sheathing.

Well i received the cable so i could cable my apartment with my new 5.1 system. Well as soon as i started ripping up the carpet my girlfriend busted into tears and told me that i am ripping apart the carpet and that she didn't want me to run the speaker cable. Well i thought i had wasted 50 bucks and 100ft in speaker cable, until i assured her that everything would be ok. I ended up running the cable and it fit wonderfully underneath my carpet. I can not feel it at all on my feet, and you can't even see it under the carpet. I would recommend this cable to anyone trying to run speaker wire underneath their carpet. It worked great for me. It sort of stinks running it around a corner but other then that great cable.

Very clean installation, easy to run along walls. Not sure about sound quality as i had monster wire before i used the AR flat. Sounds great to my ears.

WOuld buy again in future

I bought some of their cable back in 2005 and it's now yellow. This is due to cheap fire retardant chemicals in the plastic/rubber sheathing. I'd suggest trying a different manufacture if this might bother you.

Flat enough (there is no such thing as truly flat cable, duh!), and the conductor is reasonably high quality. This is a smoking good deal for speaker cable and it can't be felt underneath my carpet. I've bought lots of off brand speaker cable over the years trying to avoid the $50 rip-off, and this is as good as any I've tried.

I used this wire to connect my sound system to wireless surround speakers, therefore I did not have to run them under a carpet or along floorboards. I think the wires are thinner than regular wire of similar gauge, but they are not paper thin. They cannot be, the wire has thickness as does the insulating cover. As others have noted, the color is a pale beige and happens to match my walls very well. As there are 1000's of colors people paint their walls you can't expect an exact match but if color is important I'm sure you can paint over the wire. If you have left over paint for your walls paint the wire before using or else you will have to paint the entire wall as paint changes color a bit with time.

The wire lays pretty flat against the wall but no wire is going to be perfectly flat unless you tack it to the wall. Overall it is fairly unobtrusive.

Sound quality is good enough for my system as the wireless surround is the weak link overall.

My only negative comment is that the wire is wider than similar gauge wire so when I stapled it to the running board the staple went through the wire. To overcome this I could have gotten wider staples that need to be hammered, but I just folded the wire in half where I needed it stapled. Yes it shows, but so do the staples.

Until we figure out a better way to power wireless speakers there will have to be a compromise somewhere in wiring speakers remote to the receiver and this product does an admirable job.