Can speaker cables be too thick?

Chris,

Honestly is doesn't really matter but yes thicker is in general is ever so slightly better to avoid power loss and enhance damping. However if you want to delve into complexities see this link Cable diameter and spacing

Before you panic, remember that the scales on these charts are so exagerated and effects are so very small that it really doesn't matter.

Some people will try to convince that group delay is a big issue in speaker cables (from self inductance) and some will talk about skin effect....and on and on the hype will run....litz wires you name it - all kinds of solutions. These people are correct about some of the physics and it does matter in RF applications....but they are wrong about the order of magnitude of these effects by up to 1000 at audio frequencies.

For power loss we are talking about tenths of a decibel (for 8 ohm load) and for group delay we are talking two or three hundred BILLIONTHS of a second. And those of you that worry about the group delay differences from low frequency to high frequencies....these are typically 50 billionths of a second. This is equivalent to moving your tweeter ONE THOUSANDTH of an INCH. (Do you imagine that the baffle and tweeter plate holding the tweeter are manufactured to these kind of tolerances? - Forget it)

The fact of the matter is that pretty much any cable should be ok provided you avoid the obvious pitfalls...4 ohm speakers with 50 foot speaker cables of 20 AWG.

This is an independent engineers view. I have no axe to grind as I don't sell cables.

Quote from Shadorne: "...group delay we are talking two or three hundred BILLIONTHS of a second." That is even shorter than the lifespan of a muon*!

* elementary particle

Chris

The fact of the matter is that pretty much any cable should be ok provided you avoid the obvious pitfalls...4 ohm speakers with 50 foot speaker cables of 20 AWG.

This is an independent engineers view. I have no axe to grind as I don't sell cables.

Shadorne my friend, just when I thought we were making nice progress on the cable front you take a few steps back.

I understand your zeal for the technical side of cables and measurements, but your mistake is assuming that any of that translates into knowledge about how they actually sound. If you'd spend half as much time listening to cables made with different conductors, dielectrics, gauges, etc... as you spent learning all the techno-theory, you'd find that you are incorrect in your assertions.

You do have an axe to grind in that you seem interested in convincing yourself and others that cables all sound virtually the same- and that's perfectly ok- but you're wrong:)

"He insists that a length of 10-15 feet is optimal, and that anything shorter than 10 feet is not good."

I've heard something similar (I think from Mapleshade) - that no run should be shorter than 8 feet. Can anybody shed light on this. I might be going from a stereo amp to mono blocks and assumed I would benefit from a shorter run than my current 3 meters.