This is from a recent Stereophile review:

"Arguably, the biggest drawbacks to single-chassis receivers and multichannel amps are the long runs of speaker cables required. Good cables are expensive and bulky, and having them all exit from a small plot of electronic real estate can be unsightly. But worse, as any serious audiophile will explain, long lengths of speaker cable, no matter how good, tend to degrade the sound, especially the bass. This is due to the damping factor, which has to do with an amplifier's ability to control the movement of the woofer cone. The higher the damping factor, the better the amplifier's ability to control cone movement, and thus the tighter, deeper, and more defined the bass will be.

The damping factor is defined as the ratio of the speaker's load impedance to the amplifier's output impedance. All things being equal, the higher the damping factor, the better. But the longer the run of speaker cable, the greater the resistance and the lower the damping factor.

The Monoblock Solution
One way to preserve an amplifier-speaker combo's potentially high damping factor, and thus good bass control, is to run long lengths of line-level interconnect from a preamp-processor to monoblock (single-channel) amplifiers placed close to each speaker"

Just ran across this and remembered this post on this forum. I have no clue about the technical realities of the above posted quote. I also have no intention of starting an arguement. I'm just posting what I read.