Length- Speaker wire/interconnect ?s

I'm not surprised by the previous two responses, as this is pretty general knowledge. All I can add is that I'm having no trouble at all with 9' interconnects--not really long but not really short either--used with a passive preamp. Do you have monoblock power amps? That's the only way to have very short speaker cables, and is worth thinking about. I made that change recently, and will never look back. It brought me a lot closer to the music.

I forgot to say one thing: I'm also using a CD player straight into the 9' interconnects, with no problem. And another thing: shielding isn't the ONLY reason, surely, for having short speaker cables with long interconnects.