REL subwoofer cable

I know it's against audiophile etiquette, but I just coiled the extra length of mine. Coiling generally negatively affects high frequencies, but this should not be an issue for a subwoofer feed.

Enjoy,
Bob

Coiling generally negatively affects high frequencies, but this should not be an issue for a subwoofer feed.

Very true. Coiling increases inductance. The series impedance (something like resistance, putting it a little simplistically) which would result from that inductance is directly proportional to frequency, so it should be insignificant at deep bass frequencies.

Apart from the coiling question, though, I would suggest that you try to determine the d.c. resistance, in ohms, of the 25 foot cable length (actually, 50 feet for the round-trip). That would be dependent on the gauge of the cable; if you know the gauge you can look up the ohms per foot in standard wire gauge tables on the web. If that resistance is more than a small fraction of an ohm, it could affect bass damping. If it is in the range of, say, 0.1 to 0.5 ohms or less, then it should be no problem since that would be a very small fraction of the subwoofer impedance.

Regards,
-- Al

When I got my Rel B3 it came with a 35' cable. Hooked it up and after about a month I thought it was sounding good but not great. Then it dawned on me my speaker cables are only 10'. I cut the cable in half and to me it sounded a world better. But a couple of months later something didnt quite seem right. I measured the Rel cable and it was 16' long. Thats when I cut it to 9 ft. Its been well over a year and it sounds perfect. To ME (and NOT everyone will agree) all cables should be within 50% length of the rest of your cables. I can hear the difference IF AND ONLY IF I hear the same lengths first. In other words if your speaker cables are 10' then any other cables driving speakers should be no less than 5' and no more than 15'. I'm sure this will bring some differences of opinion. (Home theater would be the exception because of the delay you can add for the surrounds). To me the bass blends in better. Thats my thoughts and opinions. And I approve this post!!

Xti16 -- Yes, that will bring some differences of opinion. I'm sure your sonic perceptions were correct, but your technical reasoning is not. The delay of an electrical signal through 35 feet of cable is, roughly speaking, on the order of 100 nanoseconds (a nanosecond is a billionth of a second). Typical cable delays are around 2 or 3 nanoseconds per foot. A quick calculation reveals that 100 ns is approximately 0.001% of a single period of a 100 Hz bass note. I don't think there is any species in existence that could perceive that.

More likely, the changes you heard were due to the lower d.c. resistance of the shorter cable length, which would have nothing to do with the similarity of that length to the length of the cables running to the main speakers.

Regards,
-- Al