Speaker cables of different lengths?

what is your opinion on having each speaker served with a different length of wire?

my speakers and listening sofa are equidistant in the classic triangle listening configuration, which is great, but in my new house there is a doorway between the left speaker and my amp, so i have to run the cable under the floorboards to service it, adding around 10 linear feet of cable. for my right channel, which is only about 4 feet from my rack, should i really have the same length of cable, or would it be ok to trim the slack down?

would there be a sonic difference? would there be an impact on the amp or speakers? wouldn't want to damage anything.... maybe this is a totally dumb question.

 

No.

Since you ask it suggest you wish to know a bit more.

http://white.hometheatertalk.com/speakercablelength.htm

 

No difference whatsoever. I once was in the same situation and I found the different lengths no problem. Someone once did the sums and found that there'd have to be several kilometres' difference for there to be any audible difference.

 

The big Q? is: what would you gain from cutting one lenth of cable short?

I'm sure you can hide it somewhere...

 

that's the thing: it's just sort of looped up and sitting on the floor next to the stand. looks super-weird...

thanks for the replies folks!

 

i did the whole cable must be cut to the same length thing a while back...became an obsession really....complete waste of time!

 

A smidgeon off topic but how about biwiring using different length cables between bass and treble- for e.g, 2m length cables for the treble and 3m length cables for the bass. Would that present a problem?

 

Well, one day you'll move the stereo and you might need some more cable... Then what?

 

I'll pray to our Hifi God before bedtime and get back to you in the morning.

 

Hi David,

That wouldn't present any problems.

 

Hi Rob

I wouldn't have thought so either. But I was told that it would, and urged not to, when I posed the question to the Chord Company with regards to one of their copper cables.

D.

 

This is indeed the case as far as the time the respective signals have to travel along the cables, at a velocity near to the velocity of light.

But a cable of several km length would have a vastly different resistance than one of several metres would it not? At what point would this factor influence perceived sound?

An experiment I read of involved one speaker connected to a 1m cable and the other interchanged between a 1m and a 100m cable. Double-blind tests (for what they are worth) produced the usual result - nobody could reliably tell the difference.