How to Identify Speaker Wires

Identifying your positive and negative speaker wires is essential for making the proper connections between them and your receiver.

Identifying speaker wires correctly is important to getting the best results from your speakers. Hooking up your speakers incorrectly will result in them not producing the sound correctly, and may eventually cause damage to your amplifier. To prevent this from happening, you must know which wire is positive and which one is negative. With the right instruction, you'll be able to determine which wire should be placed into the appropriate jacks on your amplifier or receiver.

Things You'll Need

• 1.5V battery

Instructions

1. Look for a strip indicator on one of the two wires coming from your speaker. If your speaker wires contain one that has this strip, it means that the one with it is the positive (+) wire. It should be connected to the red (+) connector on your amplifier. The wire without a strip should be inserted into the negative (-) connector of the receiver as well.

2. Touch the ends of a speaker wire that is connected to a speaker to the ends of a 1.5V battery. Only touch them to the battery for a short amount of time, as prolonged connection might damage your speaker.

3. Watch the see whether the speaker's woofer moves out. If it does, then the wire touching the positive terminal of the battery is the positive. Connect that wire into the red (+) terminal on your receiver. If the speaker doesn't respond to the battery at first attempt, place each ends of the wires on opposite battery terminals to identify the positive wire.

Tips & Warnings

• Although positive and negative speaker wires are made up of either copper or tin, the terminals on your receiver that they're connected to doesn't matter -- as long as they're connected to the same polarities on the speakers themselves.

• Using a battery that is larger than 1.5V for wire testing may cause severe damage to your speakers.

References

• Omega Electronics: Speaker Wire Installation Guide
• TechGuys: Determining Speaker Polarity