Can Speaker Cable be too Short ? (1 Viewer)

[Joe Mihok]

Someone told me Speaker cables should be at least 20ft in length because anything shorter will cause great resistance. Right now I'm using 5 ft pieces of 12-gauge wire for my 2 fronts and centre speakers .... is this a bad thing ?

Might be a stupid question but I thought I would ask it anyways . Thanks for any answers this thread might produce.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Hi Joe.

Make a note of who "Someone" is and never, ever take their advice again.

There are several things wrong with that persons statement.

First: resistance is a function of length. Double the length and you double the resistance.

Second: Many audiophiles believe in short speaker wires. Arthur Dunluvy (a designer of high-end speaker systems) made sure one system had speaker wires of no more than 6 feet in length. This involved putting a separate amplifier behind each speaker to keep the wires short.

There IS a audio myth that 'Someone' might be pushing. It's based on this:

Fact: Your speaker has a "Nominal Impedence" of 8 ohms. But the impedence changes based on the sound. At low frequencies, the speaker impedence can be around 2 ohms. Several minutes of low-frequency sounds (like the lobby shootout scene in The Matrix can look like a short, causing heat and damaging your amp.

Fact: One way to 'protect' your speaker is put some fixed resistance between the amp and speaker to make sure the resistance/impedence stays in the 3,4,5 ohm range.

Myth: A long run of speaker wire will give a fixed resistance and 'protect' your electronics.

This is bad for 2 reasons:

• Speaker wire has a resistance of about 0.0082 ohms/ft. 20 feet of the stuff would give you something like 0.16 ohms resistance - hardly doing anything to protect your amp
• The long run of speaker wire creates other issues including roll-off, and RFI issues (the long wire can act like an antenna)

I suggest measuring your speaker wires to the exact length needed, then add a few feet so you can play with speaker positions. You also want to add about 1-2 feet beyond this so you can cut off the ends and re-strip every year or so as the exposed copper will oxidize.

Hope this helps.

 

[Joe Mihok]

You have no idea .

 

[DavidLW]

YES

If the distance between your amp and speaker is 12 feet and your cables are 10 feet, then they're too short.

 

[Joe Mihok]

lol, great answer

 

[Doug_M_Fraser]

The best reponse to all questions regading speaker cables that I ever heard was the following:

"I like my speaker wire SHORT and THICK"

 

[JasonMilch]

No TRUE. No such thing as too short. (Regarding cables that is

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Bob, you forgot to describe the #1 explanation of that "audio myth":

The retailer gets to sell at least 100 ft. of really expensive speaker wire.

Sort of a insidious variation of the "all wires must be the same length or else your ears will hear the sounds at different times" myth.

 

[Robert Cowan]

eh, i use 3ft speaker cable for my mains. i have amps RIGHT next to the speaker, and the terminals on the speaker are at the very bottom. i could get away with 1ft if i wanted to

the less cable in a system, the better.