Adding an extra 1ft to premium speaker cables

Yes, it would.

ozzy

A common dilemma. 

I have gotten stuck in this situation before. I am an audiophile, so the answer was easy, be financially irresponsible, and buy a new set of the correct length. Hence I have no experience. 

However, given my experience with cables, I have a guess. With lots of caveats. Adding an extra foot of less expensive (note I did not say cheap) would sound better, than say just a full run of low quality cable. I would put the less expensive stuff attached to the amp. Hopefully it is like one tier down of the same brand of cable... not a completely different brand of cable... or hanger wire or something, 

There are so many problems with my rational, they are hard to count. That’s my guess. 

Intuitively, one would think it will defeat the purpose. If the cheap cable was to take away anything, there would be no way to put it back. However, since you are dealing with cheap cable, it would not cost much to give it a try and revert back to the original state if things don’t pan out. 
Keep in mind that the term cheap has different meanings depending on how deep your pockets are. Have you considered Ali Express cables? They seem to be over performing their price. 

Don't do it ...

I am curious why "there’s no way to change it", in regard to your needing one more foot.

Perhaps there is a solution that you haven't considered.

Only one way to be sure try it and find out.

If not sell them and use the proceeds towards wires long enough to do the job for you.

If you got them for free whatever they sell for is your bonus to use as you see fit.

If you try, just make sure you don't do anything that might hurt the resale value of these cables...what brand and model cables are they ?

@mapman 

+1

DO NOT DO IT! 

Contact TMR or the Cable Company and see if they can do a partial trade for a longer cable.

Good suggestion.   

Move something (temporarily) to see how the cables sound with your gear - you may not even like the sound.

DeKay

dekay, exactly, who says they are great based on cost, or ideas, gotta hear them, AND you need someone to help you blindly compare them so you don’t have expectation bias of the nth degree.

IF they actually sound great, you might consider re-working the location of the connectors on the speakers to a new location (you could make a recessed skirt and put the connectors on the side or front), or make a new high quality whip from the crossover board to an external  connector box to let you use shorter cables

One of the most surprising things is when you open up a renowned vintage speaker and see the small common wire the OEM used back then. These great speakers often made their mark as great using lightweight bell wire!

+1 don't do it' might as well buy some zip cord at Home Depot...  Any benefit from that "premium" cable would be lost.

What’s the downside of going short.  Cost benefit? 

@rankaudio can you elaborate on “premium quality speaker cables”? 
What are they exactly? To me that’s a very vague description that can mean anything from $20 cables to $20,000 and up in cables. The most practical path forward depends on your answer. 
 

The wiring inside your speakers is probably not as premium as your cables, so I dout the final foot will do much to degrade the sound. Go to your local retailer and buy 4 feet of AQ or Transparent 12-2 custom install cable, get some BFA bananas for the ends and a pair of F-F banana couplers. 
https://a.co/d/0yQzpPD

https://a.co/d/ijtCUPs

@OP. Move your amplifier closer to the speakers.

Gotta love 18 responses and not one from the OP. Almost like someone’s trying to prank Like they do on those YouTube videos.

Thanks for the assistance everyone. So here's the real moral of the story. How could any high quality speaker cable at any price maintain its integrity unless it were connected directly to the internal crossover or source? Almost every speaker is going to have an additional foot of internal cable or wire connecting the crossover to the internal speaker terminals that the end-user doesn't see. Psychologically the listener doesn't see this and so they make up their mind that the cables made some change to the sound. My speakers had some 14 gauge copper wire inside the cabinet, so why would any higher quality speaker cable make any difference? In essence, every speaker has an extra foot of wire that isn't going to be the same as the cables you bought. It would only be as good as the weakest link, wouldn't it?  

Audio neurosis! In the old days everyone used zip cord and nobody complained. Just add a foot or two of zip cord. Problem solved!

Put the good cables next to the speakers make sure they are bothe solid core, or both strand. It works for me.No don’t use zip cord. No disrespect to Jason.

I generally just use some 14 gauge copper wire and it works fine. I think audioholics did the best review on fancy cables ever.

 https://youtu.be/kR12Ttuxobs?si=MgfIWSuOiBbjwxnA

Just finished my kappa 9 infinities  took apart looked like someone used cca in there.replaced the crossover and internal wire with 10 awg ofc.replaced the 2 woofers and it sounds great oak cabs. I think if you solder good wire on it won't hurt as an extension. I built a speaker cable out of 4 awg wire ofc and they sound great.i think my cardas gold reference is 4 awg. Enjoy the experiments and the music.

In my Magnepan Mini office system, I need 2 sets of speaker cables. One set from the amp (stereo)  to the bass module. Then another set from the bass module to the tweeter + mid satellite panels. I used cheap (but well regarded) cables on both sets and it was very good. I even wrote about it on A'gon.

However, I added a stand to raise the bass panel off the floor and this allowed me to use the very short expensive Audience FrontRow speaker cables I purchased in the past for monoi blocks.  Adding this expensive speaker cable did improve the sound a bit more on the Maggies.

I do have another set of long Audience FrontRow speaker cables I use for my Livingroom system and can try an all Audience setup on the office Maggie system, but I have not done this yet.  think I will try this next week.

Absolutely not. Electricity doesn't know nor care if it's OFC or silver or any other conductor if it's the same or similar gauge wire. Objectively, you won't notice any difference.  

@gkelly you nailed it. The guy’s a 🤡 that just wants attention 

Not at all. Some may just want to know that they all have an extra cable in front of their nice cables too. 

Just making sure I've got the story straight...

No one gave you short premium speaker cables. You made that up so you could elicit predictable responses (don't do it), and then show everyone how smart you are by explaining that there are other wires inside the speaker cabinet that carry the signal to the crossover/speakers. 

Thanks. I had no idea.

wonder if that reasoning  would apply to power cords too...

is this Schrödinger's extra cable?

@roadcykler - "Electricity doesn't know nor care if it's OFC or silver or any other conductor if it's the same or similar gauge wire."  So electricity doesn't care about the composition of the medium through which its propagating?  Unless you are making an existential point about electricity not having separate consciousness, this is complete nonsense.  

the cables can be expensive, there's no charge for the expectation bias.

Here are a few points to consider: if one adheres to the theory of allocating 20% of the speaker’s cost to speaker cables, there is a higher likelihood of aligning the quality of wire used within the speaker. However, it is important to note that changing the wire inside the speaker to a higher-quality wire does not necessarily guarantee a superior sound quality. It is possible that the speaker’s voice was intentionally crafted to resonate with specific wires.  

OP made his point in a questionable way, but it's a fair point nonetheless. 

The problem with most armchair Audiophiles perorating endlessly in forums about the stunning aural benefits of tweaks, network gear and cryogenically treated USB cables is that they can't tell the difference between a soldering station and a train station and they've never even taken the covers off their gear. As a result, they have no idea what lurks inside. How about $4000 power cords going into $500 wall receptacles, themselves screwed onto decidedly non-Audiophile Romex held together by garbage wire nuts? Wire nuts! Talk about microphonics now. And how about $400 graphene fuses snapped into 10-cent fuse holders made of common steel? Etc

Meanwhile, everyone politely agrees to ooh and aah over the emperor's new clothes, including genuine audiophiles who know better.

To appreciate good sound I need to have a degree in electrical engineering? So if I tell you a USDA Prime ribeye steak tastes better to me than a USDA Choice roundeye, both cooked on the same grill by the same chef to the same medium rare internal temperature, you will tell me I’m full of 💩 because I’m not a butcher?

And if I tell you that a BMW drives better than a Prius, that’s impossible because I’m not a mechanic?

@devinplombier you sir, along with others like you, exist in some sort of alternate reality where a group of you had convinced yourselves that everything is the same. Yeah my ears don’t work because how can they? How can an outlet make a difference? It’s only contacts, contact area, different conductors and plating, etc. and none of this matters it just can’t!

See this is the beauty of having a difference of opinion. Mine based on experience (yes even with $500 outlets and I actually prefer the $80 one that sounds more natural to me…confirmation bias be damned) and yours based on assumptions. 

That’s ok though. There are different ways to start a conversation.

It’s not the first conversation on the topic of cables. There are more of them here than California has raisins. This is just another thread that was started by some attention deprived individual with ill intent to bait and disrespect. 

My apologies to my fellow forum members for the way it was conveyed. That aside, I appreciate the sincerity for those who assisted. 

What is interesting is that (to my knowledge at least) none of you audiophile-outlets aficionados has stepped up to the plate and wired a homerun from listening room to electrical panel out of 10AWG Furutech all-silver cable.

But wait! Even if one spent thousands on an Audiophile electrical panel, that panel is still wired to horrid aluminum service entrance cables! And what goes on in the street beyond that, forget about it!

So, going one step further, what y'all seem to need is the aforementioned silver cable in-wall wiring leading not to the grid, but to a dedicated Teslawall charged by solar panels.

One step further? Have your gear modded to accept DC straight from the wall, eliminating any unnecessary DC to AC to DC conversion.

Want really clean power that can actually make a difference, unlike a measly $500 outlet on its own lonesome? Do the work, guys.

@devinplombier  most of the audiophiles I know have dedicated circuits, so why would there be any wire nuts? You seem to think any audiophile that spends more money than you would on cables and tweaks doesn't know anything about the equipment, which isn't necessarily true. 

So it’s a pretty simple concept really. Most seasoned audiophiles I know, and a lot of them are here on audiogon, in addition to their love for music and good sound are also avid gearheads. I like to know what’s in the box. I like reading about different design philosophies and even more importantly I like to hear it all. Try it in my system. 

At some point your system and room begin to gel and while differences between some components or cables are not earth shattering they’re pivotal in achieving the ultimate sound quality where the components and cables just get out of the way and you stop using music to evaluate equipment and start enjoying it. it’s actually a great feeling. Not an easy goal to accomplish in this hobby.
 

Keep in mind human brain is pretty complex and it just doesn’t interpret the information the same way oscilloscope or any other type of instrument does. If it was that simple we wouldn’t have Stradivarius and Guarneri, or Gibson and Fender, or Steinway and Bosendorfer. 

@invalid 

The word "necessarily" in

You seem to think any audiophile that spends more money than you would on cables and tweaks doesn’t know anything about the equipment, which isn’t necessarily true. 

is much appreciated. Thank you.

What I do want to know is, why are none of y’all who are so convinced that clean power makes a huge difference in sound quality putting your money where your mouth is, and building a really clean power supply? Why are you instead purchasing furutech outlets and some such that are nothing but amulets that may make a difference best characterized as infinitesimal?

@audphile1 

So it’s a pretty simple concept really. Most seasoned audiophiles I know, and a lot of them are here on audiogon, in addition to their love for music and good sound are also avid gearheads. I like to know what’s in the box. I like reading about different design philosophies and even more importantly I like to hear it all. Try it in my system. 

At some point your system and room begin to gel and while differences between some components or cables are not earth shattering they’re pivotal in achieving the ultimate sound quality where the components and cables just get out of the way and you stop using music to evaluate equipment and start enjoying it. it’s actually a great feeling. Not an easy goal to accomplish in this hobby.
 

Keep in mind human brain is pretty complex and it just doesn’t interpret the information the same way oscilloscope or any other type of instrument does. If it was that simple we wouldn’t have Stradivarius and Guarneri, or Gibson and Fender, or Steinway and Bosendorfer. 

Now that's starting to sound reasonable. I can respect that.

Clean power? How about going off grid. Read about Stromtank. If you know the difference between a soldering station and a train station, get your soldering iron out and build yourself this type of device. Don’t be an armchair audiophile. 

@rankaudio.

Thanks for the assistance everyone. So here's the real moral of the story. How could any high quality speaker cable at any price maintain its integrity unless it were connected directly to the internal crossover or source? Almost every speaker is going to have an additional foot of internal cable or wire connecting the crossover to the internal speaker terminals that the end-user doesn't see.

My Raidho td1.2 uses Nordost cables for all of their internal wiring. You made the assumption that the internal cable is the weak link. That’s not necessarily true. Some manufacturers pay a lot of attention to the crossover components and wiring.  It’s kind of unfair to put everyone in the same basket. 

@rankaudio Interesting perspective.
 

There are numerous audio companies recommending use of high quality cables and a market that has existed for decades.  I’m not sure if you’re philosophical question will impact the experience and decision of others.

spenav and overthemoon, I agree with you both. No doubt there are speakers with good internal wiring. Could be the opposite situation in some cases like you’re indicating. I’m just merely pointing out whether or not the cables can remain faithful for either case if there’s two different cables. Thank you for sharing.

Years ago, like before the late 70’s, almost everyone used zip cord. Stereo stores, speaker manufacturers, consumers, pro audio installers. It was that or Belden 5000 series. Monster came out in the late 70’s with their large gauge multi-core speaker wire and convinced people that you had to have a cable that had a small gauge conductor set in the center and a larger gauge conductor set wrapped around it, to steer the frequencies through the proper wires so the sound was better. By the early 80s OFC speaker cable became the rage (it too came on rolls). And many years later came the super cables, but usually for the audiophile because they were way too expensive to be used by the consumer or pro who stuck with the same old wires. 

And still today it’s still the same at the non-audiophile level, although a lot of pro situations are now using 10g. For the most part the speaker manufacturers (JBL, Wharfdale, Infinity, Klipsch, Altec-Landing, etc. etc.) are still using the same 12-14ga something in their speakers that they always have used.  

So, will a 1ft piece of non-audiophile speaker wire hurt your listening experience?  Unless you’re using bell wire, or something with a gauge smaller than the rest of the wire, probably not: there won’t be enough resistance or capcitance add to make a difference.