What do you do with different speaker distance? (1 Viewer)

[Howard_S]

If one is like 3ft away and one is like 9ft what would you do in terms of buying speaker cables? Would you buy 3/9, 6/9 or 9/9?

 

[John Stegman]

It is always recommended that you use equal length speaker wire.

 

[John Garcia]

It is a good rule of thumb to have them the same length, but within a few feet, it won't matter much. 3 vs 9 ft though, I would keep them closer in length than that. DO NOT COIL EXCESS WIRE. Try to lay it flat in an "S" if possible.

 

[RAF]

If you use 12 gauge speaker wire the distances for short lengths really doesn't matter that much. Yes, in theory, equal lengths should produce equal sound (everything else being equal) but in reality, the difference in resistance of the wires for different lengths like you are talking about is so small that the human ear cannot distinguish between them.

I don't have the reference handy, but a long time back somebody gave a very good argument regarding this and showed, through calculations and other logic that unequal lengths for large gauge wire will not produce unequal sound (assuming for course that we are talking about 3-4 feet versus 8-10 feet, and not 3-4 feet versus 300-400 feet).

 

[Howard_S]

I have heard that having different speaker lengths is okay. But even those who advocate it have fears when the discrepancy gets too long so I'm just wondering how much difference would start to be too much.

 

[Chu Gai]

no audible difference Howard but you might consider planning ahead in the eventuality that you rearrange things

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Uhhhh... I must disagree that having equal length speaker wires is recommended. This is an audio myth.

If you want to look at the physics:

Impedence: Impedence does not depend upon the length of the wire so it's a non-issue.

Resistance: Well, the WORST number for ohms per foot for 18 ga wire I have found was something like 0.018 ohms/ft. If you do the math you will find the difference of 6 feet is trivial and can be ignored. (And you are going to adjust the levels to each speaker individually anyway which would compensate for this issue anyway.)

Timing: Another fourm spent a few weeks to do the math and determined that it would take a DIFFERENCE of over 80 feet of speaker wire to produce a 1% phase-shift (fancy phrase for time-delay). You might only approach this for long runs to the rear speakers, but your receiver allows you to set a time-delay for the rears that swamps this value.

Slant: Ok, here is where there IS an issue with a long speaker wire. Short answer: 6 feet will likely not have an issue.

Hope this helps.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

This is an Link Removed at the “Building a Home Theater” section.
Here’s an excerpt from a post I made there earlier today:

It looks like I need to make an addendum to my earlier post on this thread [about length not mattering much]. I spent the past couple of days installing a system in a teen club. The mains were bi-amped (i.e., true bi-amping with an electronic crossover, not what passes as bi-ampng in the hi-fi world). The amps were on one side of the stage, which necessitated speaker wire runs of different lengths. One run was 48ft, the other 32ft (a 16ft. difference).
I expected a slight loss for the longer run (12ga. wire was used), but I was amazed to find, running the mids only with pink noise, a 3dB difference between the two speakers.

Happy Holidays,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Wayne- That doesn't sound right. Do any swaps between the 2 lines to make sure it wasn't anything else? (The lines themselves, speakers, amps, channels, etc...)

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Kevin,

I was surprised, it does seem pretty strange. It was getting late by the time I got around to tweaking the system, so I didn’t have a chance to take it any further. I won’t be back there until next weekend. The mids were on separate channels of a stereo amp. I’ll check the highs next time – they are both on the same amp channel – and maybe swapping the channels of the mids. We’ll see what happens.

Happy Holidays,

Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Howard_S]

So you think I should try to have the same length of speaker wire even though I'll have aobut 5ft extra wire on one side?

 

[Chu Gai]

wayne, a 3db loss from those speaker cable length differences suggests something else is going on. attributing it to length is in error. there is no theoretical reason to support it suggesting other factors are at play here.