wire length ques.

Posted by: marcpam

wire length ques. - 03/03/05 01:58 PM

side surround wire length is around 30 ft. for my left and around 20 ft. for my right.

ques:

do you guys think that it will matter if I was to keep the wire lengths the exact same? Will it make any diff. in sound?

Thanks,
Posted by: gonk

Re: wire length ques. - 03/03/05 02:02 PM

It should make no difference at all. Don't worry about it, it'll work fine if you cut each wire to the length appropriate for that run (which will also avoid the hassle of an extra ten feet of wire wadded up somewhere for the right channel).
Posted by: wingnut4772

Re: wire length ques. - 03/03/05 02:08 PM

I have the exact same situation but I purchased two 30 ft lengths of Cobalt Cable on EBAY. Supposedly , the speaker cable is not supposed to coil, loop, or fold for optimum sound quality but when you have an extra 10 feet of cable, this is kind of hard to avoid.I have the 30 ft cable laid out as best I can and I can not hear a difference between the two speakers. I don't think that at 20 and 30 ft. it makes much of a difference anyway. Only at much longer distances, or so I have read.
Posted by: painttoad

Re: wire length ques. - 03/03/05 02:21 PM

since my system is not yet permanent,still have to paint all racks & stands and do a slight remodel to the basement,i have runs of 14/2 all over and some is coiled(don't want to cut a length too short and have to buy more)and i hear nothing but music,between passages is dead silent,and i have never had that before.just have to keep the puter's spdif disconnected to avoid the hum.think i'll even sell those straightwire speaker cables as i don't think i even need them(other than the "look cool factor")
Posted by: gonk

Re: wire length ques. - 03/03/05 02:45 PM

As wingnut mentioned, it is sometimes recommended that you avoid coiling or looping excess lengths of speaker cable - this is because of a fear that the coil will act as a sort of rudimentary inductor and thereby change the overall inductance of the speaker cabling. I don't know how measurable that change would be, either electrically or audibly, but it should be [i]very/[i] small (approaching nil). As for folding a cable, you obviously don't want to pinch it badly enough to damage conductors inside the cable.
Posted by: painttoad

Re: wire length ques. - 03/03/05 02:54 PM

yeah,i would think it would be small,not like i have 100ft coiled around a piece of iron! and b&w makes some pretty particular recomendations on capacitance and resistance of cables,so if i'm not getting 100%(even 75%) performance from these speakers i'd probably be more blown away than i am

now if i had a pair of signature series i'd probably be a bit more careful!
Posted by: soundhound

Re: wire length ques. - 03/03/05 03:59 PM

The difference in length will not matter.