Does unequal speaker wire length matter?


My amp is not located centrally between my speakers. Due to the layout of my listening area, the amp is about 10 feet from one speaker, and adjacent to the other - and this will not change. I am currently using two 4-meter cables, but one of them need only be about 1 meter. I am looking to upgrade my cables, could I get away with unequal lengths and save a good bit of money?
ddcrews

Showing 1 response by sdcampbell

Not every speaker cable manufacturer states that each leg of the cable be the same length. Alpha-Core states on its web site that their Goertz speaker cable does not have to be of equal length on each leg. My own personal experience has been that as long as the cables are relatively short (less than 15 feet), you will hear no audible difference between unequal lengths, PROVIDED the speaker cable has relatively low impedance.

High impedance in speaker cables causes frequency shifts, so it is possible that some "golden ears" could hear this frequency change with high impedance speaker cables. Of course, if a speaker cable has a high impedance, it's not particularly well suited to its task, and you'd be better off with another kind that follows good electrical design principles.