2. cables
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Whats wrong with short cables?

Hello Fellow Audionuts!!!!

Just curious....

Why should speaker cables be 8 feet and over? I hear that sometimes shorter cables can cause blown tweets and such during extended guitar solo's and stuff like that.

I always kinda assumed the shorter the run the better.

Im researching into building my own Pre, SS Amps, Speakers, and cables. I was planning on running a stereo amp pair for each speaker and bi-amping them. The amplifiers will be on thier own stands between the pre/cdp/tuner and the speaker. That means i will have a speaker cable run of probably less than 4 feet.

Would it be better to tailor the legnth of the cable to the distance needed? or would it be better to use a cable over 8 feet in legnth and just have it coiled behind the speaker?
slappy
sean
6,231 posts
 
Red: Have you ever used any Nordost speaker cables? I'm wondering what your thoughts on those are as compared to the Goertz? Sean
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eldartford
4,262 posts
 
sean...I just finished wiring up a pair of MTM speakers using flat rectangular wire, Nordost I think. Each speaker had 5 wires, two ends, with two conductors...that makes 40 wire ends to strip off Teflon insulation. You have to do this carefully with an Xacto knife: can't use a wire stripper. What a job! This stuff better sound good.
redkiwi
1,092 posts
 
Hi Sean

The only time I tried Nordost, I tried Red Dawn, SPM and Quattro Fil and they all sounded a little bleached through the mids to me. However that was with an older pair of Thiels and with some Martin Logans - neither of which were likely to be good choices with the Nordost. In other respects I found the nordost to have wonderful speed, like that saying of "getting out of the way of the music". Now that I have some Sonus Fabers, I have a hankering to try them again. What I am curretly using with them is a local (New Zealand) cable called Sinkylinks. It will not suit all systems, perhaps sounding lean or lacking bass. But with the right speaker they are magical, and the bass is stunning.

I reckon amp/cable/speaker synergy is at the heart of getting great sound and that there are many good cables that can be just the right thing in the right system. It shouldn't be that way - but it is. I think the main reason for this is that none of the components we can buy are anything like perfect - and balancing the foibles/weaknesses is critical to getting the music to flow.
Ag insider logo xs@2x
drubin
3,265 posts
 
Redkiwi: Actually I am using Thiel 2.4's. but your observations about the Goertz with Thiel is similar to what I experienced.
kalan
185 posts
 
OK, has anyone tried using wire coat hangers for speaker wire like the "morrison link" suggested (that 'pragmatist' mentioned above)?

Part of Rule 3 in Morrison:

"Just snuggle one monaural amplifier up behind each speaker. You can use a foot of any kind of wire here. A bent coat hanger with the insulation scraped off will do the trick."
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