Very short speaker cable length recommended?

Audiofeil, I'll stick with my assessment. You dismiss me as an amateur, but I also have many years of experience in multiple systems. I have friends in the industry with well regarded ears who tell me my system sounds excellent. That doesn't mean I'm right all of the time , and even though at the very top end it comes down to a matter of preference, if I say it sounds horrible you can believe me.

The only thing you bring to this discussion is that several manufacturers told you that shorter was better. I say, which is backed up by other dealers on this thread, that some manufacturers say longer is better.

The only way I have to resolve this dispute is to try it myself, which I and others who have posted here have done with very clear results.

When I tried very short speaker cables it sounded horrible.

What were your results when you tried it?

If cable lengths between 6 inches and ten feet affect the sound for better or worse then either your cables or your amplifier (or both) are lousy. IMHO or course. I use 4 ft biwire Goertz to my Maggies.

I never said you were an amateur. As a matter of fact most of your posts are well written and substantive.

My offer stands to put you in touch with technical contacts at 3 prominent cable manufacturers for their expert opinion. The ball is in your court.

Thanks for your response and good listening.

I have tried almost all lenghts in my system, I am using Very short speaker cables between my tube amps and Cabasse speakers. I am also running passive attenuator instead of an active preamp. It just did not sound right with long cables, I blamed the passive attenuator, I blamed amp gain, speaker sensitivity, but everything was in order...I changed the speaker cables for very short ones just for a test, and everything fell into place: beautifull sound...The bass got nicer tighter and lower, midrange was better and the tweeters are sweeter.

Yes I do reccommend very short speaker cables, I have tried them in my system and are definitely better to my ears.

I can also get a manufacturer that says Guns are good for you....

I cannot imagine somebody selling a 10" cable for $3k... but I can imagine someone buying it!!!

Try it and see, thats the fun of all this!

Again which I stated above, the most important thing is to try it, and certain equipment will react certain ways to the load, impeadance, capacitance, inductance etc.. of a length of cable as the same cable different length will change these properties. I have relativley short speaker cables right now myself at 4.5 ft and they sound perfect, and actually better than my 6.5 ft do of the same brand just in the way they sounded better because they took very little burn in. However with my horn speakers the shorter sounded "tinny" or lean.. They were probably just too fast or too low of resistance to run on that specific horn system with that amp.

By the way above someone stated a test that someone should do to see how different a shorter vs. longer length take to burn in and sound good, Well I can tell you my 4.5 ft sounded good instantly vs. the 6.5 foot, but after each burned in for a couple months they pretty much equaled out,

I only use the 4.5 now due to its cleaner install and I have mono blocks only 2 ft from the speakers. But yes I say the longer the cable the longer it takes to settle down. Interconnects seem to be quite a different deal than speaker cables however, mostly anything from 1 meter to 3 meter I have found very hard pressed to say one is ultimatley any better, however interconnects definatley have bigger influence on the sound if you change them then do the speaker cables in my trials. I still say go a short as possible with power lines however, that is just a no brainer.
I am no expert just stating facts in my scenario's.