Whats wrong with short cables?


Hello Fellow Audionuts!!!!

Just curious....

Why should speaker cables be 8 feet and over? I hear that sometimes shorter cables can cause blown tweets and such during extended guitar solo's and stuff like that.

I always kinda assumed the shorter the run the better.

Im researching into building my own Pre, SS Amps, Speakers, and cables. I was planning on running a stereo amp pair for each speaker and bi-amping them. The amplifiers will be on thier own stands between the pre/cdp/tuner and the speaker. That means i will have a speaker cable run of probably less than 4 feet.

Would it be better to tailor the legnth of the cable to the distance needed? or would it be better to use a cable over 8 feet in legnth and just have it coiled behind the speaker?
slappy

Showing 5 responses by sean

Most speaker cables are deficient in design and using a longer length gives you more of a problem. By keeping poorly designed speaker cables as short as possible, you redue the effects that they have on the system. As such, the logical deduction would be that longer speaker cables = lower performance. This is true when you start off with something that is sub-standard to begin with. If one were to purchase "real" speaker cables that are correctly designed, you don't have to worry about running longer lengths with their signal degradation creeping in. Sean
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The Science behind speaker cable technology
Drubin: Like i said in that thread and explained why, if you don't like what you hear, it's because something else in the system isn't up to snuff. Don't blame the messenger for delivering the bad news. It is simply passing back and forth what is fed into it without contributing its' own sonic signature. If the messenger / cable were distorting the message, then you would be fully justified at pointing fingers at them. This cable is both the most technologically advanced yet simple design wrapped all in one. Out of curiosity, are you using MI-1, MI-2 or MI-3's and how long are they?

Having said that, you've probably been exposed to what your amplifier / speaker interface really sounds like now. Many people aren't happy with the results of such an event and go to great lengths to avoid dealing with such things. This is why they resort to using mega-dollar cables with less than optimum electrical characteristics to hide / distort / flavour / the sound of their system. They do this in order to make it more to their personal tastes. Nothing wrong with this so long as one knows that the presentation is not accurate or linear in reproduction and is willing to accept that.

For another conversation that touches on the "neutrality vs personal preferene" subject, try taking a look at this thread regarding integrity of reviewers / integrity of sound systems. This one went WAY off track and gets pretty repetitive, so proceed with caution. Sean
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PS... You need a Zobel. Unless you are running a Sunfire amplifier ( these have built in protection ), get some and install them before you do damage to your amp.
Your best bet for a Zobel is to build one yourself or to have someone build it for you. The Zobel should be placed at the speaker terminals in parallel across the speaker terminals. Use of Goertz without a Zobel is not recommended, can cause amplifier damage and will not result in the sonics that the system is capable of. Drop me an email if you like. I've been having problems with both my computer and my email lately, so if you don't get a response in a relatively timely manner, post here and i'll contact you via another source. Sean
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PS... Sorry if i came across relatively "harsh". It seems like "bad luck" has permanently taken roost around here. Sorry if my frustration was unnecessarily being passed on down the line.
Accept it or not, they do the least damage to the signal due to being constructed of the highest grade materials, using the least detrimental electrical characteristics and offering the widest bandwidth available. The side effect to such a "no-holds barred" approach is that amplifiers designed with a similar approach become susceptible to self-induced oscillation. This is due to the lack of self-induced signal deterioration that lesser, narrow bandwidth cables bring with them to any system.

Some manufacturers, like Naim, count on one using low grade cabling to keep their amps stable. While that is a backwards approach, it is the approach that they took.

Nobody said that obtaining optimum performance would be cheap or simple. Make your decisions and live with the results. So long as you attach the Zobel's, which is a one time thing, you don't have to worry about it ever again. Sean
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Red: Have you ever used any Nordost speaker cables? I'm wondering what your thoughts on those are as compared to the Goertz? Sean
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