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Speaker cable Question?

I have a 8foot pair of Analysis plus oval 9 cables. I have a pair of JR-201 mono's. I don't realy need 8-feet of cable, 4-feet will do just fine. I want to go with a Cardas cable.
My question is do I need to stay with 8-feet do to the resistants of the length of the 8-foot cable or can I go with a 4-foot cable and still get the proper sound?
Is there a reason why people use 8-foot cables most of the time?
Thanks
Russ
russb

Showing 2 responses by mitch2

mitch2
4,167 posts
 
Audiofeil,

The primary source of the 8 ft. minimum speaker cable length wisdom, is Pierre Sprey with Mapleshade. However, there may be others who believe that.

Quote from Mapleshade's website:

• NEVER use speaker cables shorter than 8'. Amazingly, 4' sounds much worse than 8'. Contrary to common belief, shorter interconnects (2 m or less) and longer speaker cables sound WAY BETTER than the opposite—based on extensive head-to-head tests.

Link:

http://mapleshaderecords.com/audioproducts/freeaudiotips.php
mitch2
4,167 posts
 
Just to clarify my post, my experience does not coincide with Mr. Sprey's recommendation. My speaker cables are 6 feet long and sound just fine. There are lots of folks happily using 4 ft. speaker cables with monoblock amps.

"Dielectric, capacitance and inductance are important properties in cable design. These electrical properties must be kept as low as possible, therefore permitting a very wide frequency bandwidth and fast electronic flow."
-Robert Lee, Acoustic Zen

One way to help keep capacitance, inductance, resistance and dielectric as low as possible would be to use short cables. I can't remember reading any technical reasoning for the 8 ft. minimum length and would be very interested to hear some of the EE folks chime in.
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