Speaker cable vs. interconnect cable length

Howie, Robert and now me: ditto, peace warren

Yes, it's been debated at length, to no resolution, which is a good indication that it doesn't matter all that much. If it's more convenient to do it one way rather than another, do it that way and don't worry about it. Apologies to those for whom worrying is the whole point. ;-)

Pabelson, LOL! Better watch out, you will be banned from audiophiledom for using common sense.

ICSI, normally longer IC's and shorter cables. Unless you are using a passive preamp the cables will have a more easily audiable difference. The shorter the cable the less the difference.

Icsi, I too am in the short-speaker, long-interconnect camp. My $285/foot AQ speakercable is 4 feet long. My interconnects are longer. But then the cable to the surround speakers is about 30 feet long.

However there are some audiofiles/fools (I'm in the latter group), including the owner of Mapleshade Records, who believe there's some magic MINIMUM length for speakercable. Mr. 'Mapleshade' (I still can't find his name after looking at 4 pages on his site) believes that speakercable should never be shorter than 8 feet. I'm sure he's smarter and absolutely more experienced at these things than I, so I neither agree nor disagree with that, I just ignore it. I recall hearing this '8-foot rule' decades earlier, too, but I have no recollection where.

With "Apologies to those for whom worrying is the whole point", to quote Pabelson*, I absolutely do NOT worry about different speakercable lengths, I just make 'em as short as they need to be to reach the 2 speakers. After all, if you believe that cable is evil (= audible) and hence should be using as little as possible, why make both channels equally bad? There's nothing wrong with having one channel a little-less-bad than the other.

* WELL said, my friend; I love it!
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Think about the length of line level signal cables used between microphones and recording equipment. Fifty feet or more. Obviously not a problem unless you have lousy wire or high impedance outputs.

Besides, having long interconnects qualifies you to argue about Balanced/Unbalanced.