I made my speaker wire lengths the same for my front three speakers, and the same (longer) for my two rears. And, recently, I was VERY glad that I did. Here's why:

I used to have my component rack to the left of my TV, just to the right of the left tower speaker. The excess cable ran out to behind the TV and then back to the speaker.

I bought a taller component rack a few months ago, and as a result had to move the rack to the right-hand side of the TV, placing my sub where the rack used to be. I did this because there is a cutout on the wall to the right of the TV that the taller rack would have blocked.

So, now, it's the right hand speaker that has excess cable and the left is just barely long enough. Not having to cut new cable saved me quite a bit of time when moving heavy things around. In fact, I don't think I even disconnected anything.

So, in summary: always make your rears longer than your fronts. :-)

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net