Do speaker wires have to be the same length for each speaker?

Hey Christian:  Hi they are not the same length because one speaker is +/- 10 further from the equip. The stereo is in the corner of the room due to fireplace location, sliding doors, etc... Also the wire to that far speaker goes under the house so that adds a few feet as well. 

For people working towards or that have an audiophile system they must be concerned with all aspects of a system that may have an impact. In the end every minute detail matters. But, as the OP pointed out this is not a highly resolving system. If you start working towards one, then, one of the steps will be to buy high end speaker cables… at that point they should be of the same length.

In the mean time… one highly recommended speaker cable to consider (let’s see if I can get this right); HD12-3? Years ago either Stereophile or the Absolute Sound did a comparison of a number of low to intermediate speaker cables. They threw in a Home Depot extension cord… ends cut off. It actually sounded pretty good… didn’t win against $1K cables but sounded way better than lamp cord and Radio Shack 18” gauge speaker wire”. I loved the article it was great fun and informative. While I use $5K Transparent cables on my main system. I use HD12-3 on my office system… hidden because of the orange and black color behind my desk.

Almost all speaker cables manufacturers sell them in equal lengths. Now if you are a diy hobbyists it doesn't natter.

No, it's a non-issue.  I defy anyone to hear a difference with the lengths used in the average domestic room. There are more phase issues and time smear from a speaker crossover and even more if the speaker is ported. As far as unbalancing the image, room acoustics will make a farce of that.

If the longer cable is a gauge heavier then even the amp's damping factor is maintained.  Keep the cable to the nearest speaker short. Consider the alternative. If there is, say, 8ft extra, what will you do? Coiling it up is worse than having different lengths. Think inductor tucked away amongst all the other mess of wires.

Rather pay attention to your room' acoustics which will do more, much more, than fussing over equal lengths.

Mitsy says: "Are you kidding? Of course not!":