When is unequal, equal?

Mang: When I was trying to make my own speaker cables and installing in an asymetrical setup, I found that a difference of 20% length between the two speakers did not seem to matter much, but when the difference was 50% (8ft. length vs 12ft. length) the difference was obvious. The un-equal length differences with flat (Nordost type) cables was less obvious but still noticeable.......also cutting one set of cables shorter will hurt future re-sale value, good luck, Mike.

Nsgarch, all that talk about back EMF might be true, but even a doubling of cable length would not result in an audible difference or a difference larger than simply moving one's head a few inches closer to one speaker. Keeping speaker cable lengths as short as possible is always a good thing, however, especially with tube amps.

BTW, electrostatic speakers might not suffer from reactance effects, but are affected by capacitance effects inherent in their design.

Bob P.

Bob, with regard to reactance and inductance (and to a much smaller degree, resistance) I was commenting on the bass quality (damping factor) and not stereo imaging.

Unequal cable lengths probably won't effect image balance, up to a point as Mike indicated, so long as one is using well designed cables that don't have excessive timing problems.

Yes Nsgarch, image balance will not be affected by unequal cable lengths if the difference in length is less than about 10000000:1 ratio! Bass, however, will be affected because of the reduction in damping due to the higher resistance of the longer cable, especially with amps of higher output resistance, read tubes.
Salut, Bob P.

Bass, however, will be affected because of the reduction in damping due to the higher resistance of the longer cable, especially with amps of higher output resistance, read tubes.

Which begs the question, How much? There's been a lot of cant in this thread, but not a lot of solid information. Whatever effect cable resistance has on damping factor, and therefore on bass, is easily calculable, if you know the basic physics. I'll freely admit that I don't, but I've consulted people who do, and this is what they tell me: In most systems (e.g., those with solid-state amps), simply choosing cable of sufficient gauge eliminates this as an audible problem. If you must use runs of different lengths, size your cable for the longer length, and the problem disappears.

If you use a tube amp with high output resistance, then you really owe it to yourself to learn the necessary physics.