Speaker cable Question?

Cardas is a darker cable the Anaylis-Plus. I'd try something different!

Audiofeil,

The primary source of the 8 ft. minimum speaker cable length wisdom, is Pierre Sprey with Mapleshade. However, there may be others who believe that.

Quote from Mapleshade's website:

• NEVER use speaker cables shorter than 8'. Amazingly, 4' sounds much worse than 8'. Contrary to common belief, shorter interconnects (2 m or less) and longer speaker cables sound WAY BETTER than the opposite—based on extensive head-to-head tests.

Link:

http://mapleshaderecords.com/audioproducts/freeaudiotips.php

And there are many who dispute Mr. Sprey's findings as being taken as some kind of definitive law. It may have very well been true for the system and cables used in his tests. I'm sure there are many of us who have found contradictions to this. So I really only object to the statement that "it is generally recommended". More acurately it should be "some recommend".

>>The primary source of the 8 ft. minimum speaker cable length wisdom, is Pierre Sprey with Mapleshade.<<

I've spoken with 3 manufacturers today regarding this issue and all of them consider the 8' minimum position hogwash. These are folks that own, engineer, and build cables for their livelihood. I tend to believe them.

Personally, I've never heard longer speaker cables sound better in any of my systems.

Just to clarify my post, my experience does not coincide with Mr. Sprey's recommendation. My speaker cables are 6 feet long and sound just fine. There are lots of folks happily using 4 ft. speaker cables with monoblock amps.

"Dielectric, capacitance and inductance are important properties in cable design. These electrical properties must be kept as low as possible, therefore permitting a very wide frequency bandwidth and fast electronic flow."
-Robert Lee, Acoustic Zen

One way to help keep capacitance, inductance, resistance and dielectric as low as possible would be to use short cables. I can't remember reading any technical reasoning for the 8 ft. minimum length and would be very interested to hear some of the EE folks chime in.