question. I lost one of the 3' speakon cables I use to run my two Wizzy 12Ms. I have one 3' and one 9' now. Is it a big deal if the cable lengths don't match?
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Double Bass speaker cable
- Thread starter Marc Piane
- Start date
Greg Clinkingbeard
Commercial User
You'll get a delay effect: the sound from the speaker with the longer cable will be late by about 3.054741 nanoseconds.
Cool. I just know in my audiophile/studio engineer days we were anal about making sure speaker cables were the same length. I've done the unmatched cables with my rig before and I can't really tell but I thought the resident electrical/audio geeks might know something I don't. Thanks y'all.
Luckily no OCD here though I like to mess with people that have it. I'm an a$$%*#$. I know.
Greg Clinkingbeard
Commercial User
Very long speaker cable runs can introduce some ill effects and, especially in the audiophile world, those effects have been and are, IMO, overblown. For example, if you run 14-gauge wire over, say, 50 feet, the very small increase in resistance may produce small frequency response changes when considering the entire complex impedance of the speaker/wire combination. Such runs can even alter damping factor by a rat's ***. A very small amount of amplifier power would be lost to heat as well. Thus, the advice to keep speaker runs as short as possible and to decrease numeric wire gauge (increase diameter) for longer runs. All of this also became the excuse for folks to spend gobs of money on esoteric speaker cable. Talk about questionable business ethics... oops, that's another thread.
Uneven lengths of long runs would, theoretically, cause one speaker cab to have a slightly different response than another. Slightly.For the frequencies relevant to amplification of the bass and for a 3' vs. a 9' run, what does this mean? "Nothing, absolutely nothing, say it again... yea"
Ooh-- a new idea for the cable hawkers! Speaker cables with lengths matched to within 0.0025".
Very long speaker cable runs can introduce some ill effects and, especially in the audiophile world, those effects have been and are, IMO, overblown. For example, if you run 14-gauge wire over, say, 50 feet, the very small increase in resistance may produce small frequency response changes when considering the entire complex impedance of the speaker/wire combination. Such runs can even alter damping factor by a rat's ***. Thus, the advice to keep speaker runs as short as possible and to decrease numeric wire gauge (increase diameter) for longer runs. Uneven lengths of long runs would, theoretically, cause one speaker cab to have a slightly different response than another. Slightly.
For the frequencies relevant to amplification of the bass and for a 3' vs. a 9' run, what does this mean? "Nothing, absolutely nothing, say it again... yea"
So it is the CDO thing. Thanks Les.
