Adding an extra 1ft to premium speaker cables


I was given a pair of premium quality speaker cables but they’re about 1ft short on each side and there’s no way to change it. If I added an extra 1ft of cheaper cable would it defeat the purpose?

rankaudio

@audphile1 Please define “faithful”.

Odds are overwhelming that 1 ft of added cable of equal or greater gauge will not add any appreciable resistance or capacitance to any cable to change the resulting sound.  The only thing the OP has not defined is how long the original cable is.  If the OP is talking about being 1ft short on a 3 ft premium cable (amps right next to the speaker) then there is a high chance that something will change.  If the OP is using long cables then a 1ft add, again, would have negligible impact. 

Ultimately, as I said earlier, the blocker is really what’s being used by the speaker manufacturer.  Many times it’s no better than 24 gauge bell wire. 

jonwolfpell     My guess is that the extra set of cable connectors to join two different sets of cables might be a big cause of sound degradation even if both sets of cables were the same. 

 +1. All connectors degrade the sound. IME, the speaker binding post (biggest metal mass) degrades SQ the most. Bigger and more robust binding post sounds the worse. Alex/WTA 

@pcolvin  

I never used word “faithful”. That’s one. 
Two - this thread is a clickbait. The OP doesn’t have a set of premium speaker cables that are 1ft too short. He was implying that using premium to connect speakers that use lesser quality internal wiring makes no sense to him. That’s all there is to it. 
 

@rankaudio 

I’ll answer your question now. I normally refrain from using terms like neutral. We don’t know what neutral is. As far as I’m concerned there are no “faithful” cables. Every cable will color the sound to a certain degree. I’ve heard cables in my system that rendered tone of instruments and vocals completely unnatural. 
In addition, we weren’t there to hear instruments or vocalists in the studio to have a point of reference. So neither you nor I can call out any specific cable as faithful. 

 

The way I approach is simple. Get the best possible components and speakers, get your room acoustics right and then try different cables. Whatever sounds the most natural to you and gives you goosebumps that’s the cable for you. But there’s always room for improvement. 
Your logic with cheap wires inside speakers negating all possible benefits of quality upstream cables is faulty. Going by this logic we should not even worry about quality of components upstream. So amplifiers, DACs, preamps have zero to minimal impact because ultimately cheap wires inside speakers will just completely negate all of it. If you don’t agree with it, ask yourself why better cables wouldn’t natter. 
I’ve been at it for a while now in this hobby and tried plenty of cables. Price isn’t always an indicator but in most cases good stuff costs more. 

But then you have another variable. You. Can you hear these differences? Are they enough to justify the purchase? Some people just don’t have the ear. 

OP,

YMMV.... 

I was in the same dilemma about 2 months ago. i I was using Transparent Music wave and was short of about 2 feet..( was in the process of rearranging the system layout) so I decided out of fun, to add a zip cord BUT terminating it correctly and NOT messing with the Terminals of the Transparent cable. Yeah, it sounded GOOD and I thought, Heck it works

BUT my curiosity told me to test it without the zip cord, so i had to pull the speaker wires outside (trip hazard) and remove the zip cord. Oh no, there was a loss of dimensionality of speakers. ( my speakers are Falcon Gold badge known for 3D presentations)

To cut it short, I ended changing my cables to longer Ultra Transparent

Threw my budget off big time

@audphile1

”how can they be faithful if they are plugged into a speaker terminal…”

Hence the question.