Quote Originally Posted by Billiam
I have noticed that speaker makers rarely, if ever, use high dollar speaker wire inside the speaker (perhaps I am wrong on that). Let alone the crossovers, that can be quite diverse in parts and design. How do the yeah sayers explain spending a lot of money on speaker cables when all of that signal has to go through the inner works of the speaker before you hear the sound anyway? I am on the fense on this one and would like to see the responses.
The original post contained some answerable questions, that have not yet been addressed here.

Why don't speaker makers use low gauge or other higher priced types of wire inside the cabinets? Does it make sense to use thick gauge wire from the amplifier to the speaker terminals if there is only 18 gauge zipcord on the inside?

One answer is quite simple. It is very awkward to solder thick wires from the terminals of individual drivers to the much thinner connection points on the crossover. Heating such wires with a typical 30 watt hand held soldering iron would take a long time, and the required heat could damage a crossover component such as a capacitor. Thin wires, 16 gauge or smaller, are easily and rapidly soldered.

A second answer is that short lengths (1 to 2 feet) of low gauge or other high priced wire make little difference compared to the overall conductivity of the total length of wire between the amplifier and the individual drivers of the speaker. Note that I say nothing about possible performance differences due to these short lengths of wire. There simply is no evidence for or against this. At the same time, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that varying crossover designs have a great effect on speaker performance. DIY speaker builders have experimented with substituting low and high priced capacitors, inductors, and resistors and have found that high priced capacitors, and thick gauge inductors do not add to the performance of a speaker. No evidence or reports exist about substituting the wires inside a speaker cabinet. I'd be quite surprised if it were shown that they did make a difference.

The third answer is cost. Why should commercial speaker makers spend extra money on short lengths of expensive wire that will never be visible on the finished product?