$8k for a 3m run? Wow. Used speaker cable? OK, people, now we're really starting to get out of hand here if we have to start resorting to that.

The job of good speaker cable is NOTHING. That is, pass the signal through and don't do anything to it. So, if you've got bad cable hooked up, then twice as much of it should be twice as bad.

So try taking the crappiest zipcord (of suitable gauge) that you can find, and hook up a 6" run to one of your speakers and give it a listen (may need to move your amp, heh). Then try it again with the entire spool connected between the amp and the speaker.

This ought to exaggerate any distortion you're getting from the wire. Probably far, far more than that, even, because of inductance and all that. Well, OK, maybe you want to take it off the spool to keep it from inducting.

I'll bet the results aren't as horrible as you might think.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net