Speaker cable length

If you have a basement, consider doing what I did.  I put my amp in the basement to reduce hum in the listening room.  My preamp and its power supply are also in a room adjacent to the speakers, in an equipment cabinet, with balanced IC's running through the floor to the amp.  Thus, the speakers are the only equipment in the listening room.  The power supply/vacuum for my SOTA Star Sapphire TT are also in the basement.  I didn't want that vacuum unit anywhere near the rest of my equipment.

All of this physical separation is important.  And, yes, there are plenty of holes drilled in the floors.

All cable pairs are of equal length.  The rule I learned decades ago was to keep IC's short and worry less about speaker cable length.  But with your amp in the basement,  speaker cables can still be kept relatively short, saving money.

Other than convenience and tradition, I have never understood why folks spend so much on high quality equipment, then place it all so close together. 

I can't agree with the "length makes no difference" crowd.

I'll give you that using one 6-ft. cable and one 12-ft. cable wouldn't be problematic.

But what if the cable length is 1,000 ft.?  Extreme example, but to maintain it still doesn't matter would be be ridiculous.  Obviously speaker cable length makes a difference.  The question is how much?

If my system layout allowed it, I would use equal speaker cable lengths (which I do).  We can't pretend to be able to recognize minor differences, but why not avoid them if we can?