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Thread: Speaker cable length

  1. #1
    Join Date: Mar 2018

    Location: Estonia

    Posts: 8
    I'm Rait.

    Default Speaker cable length

    Hello. I have to to make or buy new speaker cables for new speaker position in room. Equipment are in left wall, but speakers in front. So i need for right speaker 6 meter cable and for left 2,5 meters. I know that speaker cables need to be in same lenght, but will it influent sound if L 6m and R 3m. By calculations right speaker will have 0,02 ohm higher impedance. Do anybody have find sound difference if using different cable lengths?
    SACD Esoteric x-03, Turntable Michell Orbe SE with SME 309 and Transfiguration Aria, Preamp: EAR868PL, Power: EAR861, Speakers: Harbeth 30.1, Audience Au24 XLR interconnects, Home made solid core OCC speaker cables.

  2. #2
    Join Date: Mar 2017

    Location: Seaford UK

    Posts: 1,861
    I'm Dennis.

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    I relatively blindly followed the 'advice to keep the lengths the same, and I am in a similar position to you with my needs.

    But recently I have read that it is not an issue to have dissimilar lengths.

  3. #3
    Join Date: May 2016

    Location: Notts

    Posts: 2,742
    I'm Geoff.

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    Performance aside, it is worth using equal lengths because we do not keep our hifi systems in the same place for life

    Geoff

  4. #4
    Join Date: Jan 2009

    Location: Essex

    Posts: 31,856
    I'm openingabottleofwine.

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    Before I used monoblock amplifiers located directly behind each speaker, my speaker cables were of dissimilar length - in fact, as in your situation, one was twice the length of the other.

    No, the ohmic loss due the 0.02 Ohm won't make any audible difference in level (being -0.017dB for a nominal 10 Ohm load), but because this extra resistance adds to output impedance of your amplifier it could possibly affect the damping properties of the amplifier; that is the damping effect would be asymmetric. It depends on the output impedance of your amplifier as to the extent of this effect, but again I doubt whether you would notice any difference between the two channels.
    Barry

  5. #5
    Join Date: Aug 2010

    Location: East Midlands

    Posts: 426
    I'm Hugh.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rait View Post
    I know that speaker cables need to be in same lenght.
    Sez who? It's the usual 'received wisdom' bollocks. You'd need platinum ears to discern any difference in sound and longer length disparity for the damping to be an issue.

  6. #6
    Bigman80 Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by narabdela View Post
    Sez who? It's the usual 'received wisdom' bollocks. You'd need platinum ears to discern any difference in sound and longer length disparity for the damping to be an issue.
    Regardless of platinum ears or even Golden ears, the capacitance of a cable is directly affected by the length. Having one cable shorter than the other will then have differing capacitance which will affect the sound. By what degree is anyone's guess.

    Personally, all of my cables are of equal lengths.

  7. #7
    Join Date: Apr 2012

    Location: N E Kent

    Posts: 51,624
    I'm Geoff.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bigman80 View Post
    Personally, all of my cables are of equal lengths.
    And all mine are matched to the last millimetre. Not that I think it makes much difference, but why not be fussy?

  8. #8
    Bigman80 Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by walpurgis View Post
    And all mine are matched to the last millimetre. Not that I think it makes much difference, but why not be fussy?
    Im a big believer in "Everything matters"

    Sometimes the things we don't hear are making a big contribution to the things we do.

    Personal opinion again.

  9. #9
    Join Date: May 2016

    Location: Much Wenlock

    Posts: 1,522
    I'm Gary.

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    I really don't think it's this simple Oli, having a bit of time to kill......lol, I had a brief scan of various papers on this, most went over my head, but it is a can of worms, and it appears types of cable configuration and material give variable conclusions.

    I can't find any information between cable length equilibrium and straight length to various coil configurations versus unequal length speaker cable


    Quote Originally Posted by Bigman80 View Post
    Regardless of platinum ears or even Golden ears, the capacitance of a cable is directly affected by the length. Having one cable shorter than the other will then have differing capacitance which will affect the sound. By what degree is anyone's guess.

    Personally, all of my cables are of equal lengths.

  10. #10
    Bigman80 Guest

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    Quote Originally Posted by Stryder5 View Post
    I really don't think it's this simple Oli, having a bit of time to kill......lol, I had a brief scan of various papers on this, most went over my head, but it is a can of worms, and it appears types of cable configuration and material give variable conclusions.

    I can't find any information between cable length equilibrium and straight length to various coil configurations versus unequal length speaker cable
    Gary, I know there's a plethora of conflicting information on this but I really believe the simplest principals keep us on the right path.

    This is from the Cambridge website.

    "Generally speaking, resistance starts to have an effect on the performance of a speaker when resistance is greater than 5% of the speaker’s impedance. Resistance is affected by two key aspects: wire length and the cross sectional area of the wire. The shorter the wire is, the less resistance it will have. It’s also important that the wire lengths to both speakers are the same to ensure they both have equal impedance values."

    My cables have the minimum length necessary, the lowest capacity per foot and I think that makes the best cables. I'm happy to be wrong but my system suggests I'm on to something

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