Speaker cable length.
I have a small weekend cabin in the country. I have a modest system there consisting of a set of Polk Audio Monitor 7 tower speakers, an NAD C316 BEE integrated, Schiit Modi 2 DAC and a Denon radio receiver. Sounds much better than you might expect.
Anyway, we recently got a fireplace installed. This means that there will be a speaker on each side of the fireplace with the components on the right side of the fireplace. That means the right speaker is within 2-3 feet of the amp/components. The cable for the left speaker will run under the house from the amp and then back into the house on the left of the fireplace because I don't want it on the floor in front of the hearth. This will require about 16’ of speaker cable.
Will the difference (16’ of cable to the left speaker vs maybe 4’ to the right one) make a difference on a modest system like this? If so, what to do about it? I certainly don’t want 16’ of cable piled on the floor on the right.
Thanks for any input.
P.S.: I have good quality bulk speaker cable from Transparent if that makes any difference.
@n80 This falls under the rule of don't sweat the small stuff. I've had vastly different lengths of speaker cabling and could never tell the difference. In fact one time I coiled one up about 50 feet of 10ga and intentionally put the tweeter cabling on top of it. Turned off the tweeter amp and the mids amp and blasted just the base amp (>500w per ch) and zilch, zero, nada coming out of the tweeters. Cut it or don't cut it, only your brain will know. Regards, barts |
I love chiming in on posts like this! I’m always entertained by the ludicrous responses regarding speaker cables and all the BS people have bought into and the BS put out by some guy with absolutely no clue wtf he’s talking about. It’s best to keep cables about the same length but not at all an issue if cables are larger than 18 gauge. You want to try to keep impedance about the same as a good practice but again, from an engineering perspective not that critical. |
Have you considered that running outside and presumably therefor being subjected to outside temperatures, etc. may result in the cable itself being damaged by the elements and for that reason not a good choice? Understandably you don't want the cable running on the floor in front of the fireplace. However, is it possible to run it underneath a carpet placed in front of the fireplace or, alternatively, can you run the cable unobtrusively up one side and down the other side of the chimney to the speaker. I had to do that in my house and there are ways to make the wire very unnoticeable while you accomplish your objective. Running it behind the molding which likely will line the sides of your chimney can help with this cable hiding effort. |
