2. cables
  3. 126087-107

Shorten my speaker cables?

For years I loved in a home where the only practical place to put all my gear was along a wall,to the side of the speakers. That necessitated a longer run of speaker cable- specifically, for a number of years I've used, quite successfully, Analysis Plus Oval 9's, in a 16 foot run. 

Now I've moved and I my gear is along the front wall between the speakers, so my 16 foot run is more than I need. Been toying with the idea of shorter cables, and wondered if I would hear any benefit in having my 16 foot run cut and reterminated resulting in a 10 foot run plus a spare 6 foot run which I'm sure at some point I would use for something.

The other thought was perhaps to switch speaker cables all together. My balanced ICs are all Acoustic Zen Matrix II and I've heard good things about the AZ satori speaker cables. 
128x128zavato
inna
7,132 posts
 
Can be, right.
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,368 posts
 
What have we sunk to.....we need to know what "is" is
inna
7,132 posts
 
Perhaps we don't want to know it and yet we do. Now let's try to define "know".
waterzlife
139 posts
 
Yep, shorter is better. The amp pulls on a shorter "string" to move the speakers.

gdhal's avatar
gdhal
1,641 posts
 
Given the distance of typical home setup speaker cable, shorter distance is only theoretically beneficial, given the lower resistance. There is no practical difference (i.e. one cannot hear a difference) between a 25 foot cable and the same cable only 5 feet. Same goes for different length of the same cable. Only when extremely large footage - like hundreds - is considered does length and difference in length matter.

In my view keeping the cables "longer" as opposed to "shorter" is preferable because besides the increased flexibility to move or re-position equipment, I do not terminate the end (i.e. attach bare wire to binding post) and every now and again I like to re-do the ends, albeit each iteration decreased the length of the cable.
More to discover