I too agree that coiling the excess length is undesirable. And that having significantly unequal lengths would probably decimate resale value.
A point to keep in mind is that if you can manage to find speaker cables for which the longer cable behaves in an essentially neutral manner with your particular speakers and amplifier, imposing minimal sonic effects on the signal, the shorter one will too. The higher the impedance of your speakers, the easier it will be to find such a cable, although significant trial and error may still be required.
And I agree with Kal's point, that if in fact having unequal lengths has adverse sonic consequences in some systems, propagation delay/arrival time differences are NOT the reason. Although I think his reference to 7 inches should have said 7 feet, and therefore "about 0.0006 microseconds" should have said something like "less than 0.01 microseconds," at most audible frequencies. That figure would be somewhat greater at deep bass frequencies, btw, but still thousands of times less than the arrival time difference resulting from a 1 foot difference in speaker-to-listener distance.
Regards,
-- Al
A point to keep in mind is that if you can manage to find speaker cables for which the longer cable behaves in an essentially neutral manner with your particular speakers and amplifier, imposing minimal sonic effects on the signal, the shorter one will too. The higher the impedance of your speakers, the easier it will be to find such a cable, although significant trial and error may still be required.
And I agree with Kal's point, that if in fact having unequal lengths has adverse sonic consequences in some systems, propagation delay/arrival time differences are NOT the reason. Although I think his reference to 7 inches should have said 7 feet, and therefore "about 0.0006 microseconds" should have said something like "less than 0.01 microseconds," at most audible frequencies. That figure would be somewhat greater at deep bass frequencies, btw, but still thousands of times less than the arrival time difference resulting from a 1 foot difference in speaker-to-listener distance.
Regards,
-- Al