Compensating for different speaker cable lengths

Assuming that you want the cables to behave in a neutral manner, regardless of the issue of the length disparity the 16 foot cable should be chosen to have negligibly small resistance relative to the impedance of the speaker at all frequencies, and inductance such that inductive reactance at 20kHz is negligibly small relative to the impedance of the speaker at 20kHz.

If those criteria are met, the fact that the resistance and inductance of the shorter cable may be half of what they are for the longer cable will not be significant.

Capacitance is usually an insignificant factor for speaker cables, unless the particular cable has extremely high capacitance, and the amplifier is particularly sensitive to load capacitance.

Contrary to what you may read elsewhere, timing differences resulting from the length disparity will be completely insignificant, because electrical signals propagate through wires at roughly 60% to 90% of the speed of light in a vacuum (which is 186,000 miles per second).

All of that said, my instinct would be to purchase two 16 foot cables, because of the resale consideration that was mentioned, and to eliminate any doubt about whether technically unexplainable sonic effects may result from the length disparity. If you do that, minimize any coiling of the excess length on the cable to the closer speaker, as coiling would affect its inductance.

Regards,
-- Al

Wow, I was just going to post a thread on this very sme topic. What about compensated cables like MIT?

What if you move the system? You're now stuck with odd lengths. Resale is impossible. Go with a matched pair and don't have any worries.

I just went through this myself, bought some bulk DH Labs Q10 Signature wire. I need 15' on the right speaker, 7' on the left. It's cheaper (the wire is $15/foot) and easier to cut the wire to the lengths required, however come resale time you're kinda behind the eight ball. There's no harm in using equal lengths, so I bought 30' of wire and made them equal. The extra 8' of wire I don't need for the left speaker is tucked behind my audio rack.

Go with OCOS Speaker Cables. They have virtually zero impedance and now that they are owned by DynAudio, information about them is becoming readily available. Mick Tillman is the owner, and told me that unlike other cables, it's safe to have different lengths of OCOS between your left and right speakers up to 340 feet.

Smw1950