Speaker cables.. Budget again.. With a twist...

Go to:

www.diycable.com

Order the required length of "Canare 4S11" wire and the required number of Exodus "EX_BANA" banana connectors (yes, $5.25/pr but worth it).

This should fall just within your budget for the two cables of 55 or so foot combined length.

The bananas require a small jewelers/opticians/electronics screwdriver and, obviously, a wire cutter/stripper is needed. No soldering. The Canare wire is very high quality.

You can do much worse than these speaker cables. Twin 11 ga for both hot and neutral will serve you well, given the lengths needed.

Personally looking at the lengths of of cables I would go with 2 35ft cables. The reason - I have played with cable lengths and personally found that when you exceed 50% of the shortest wire I hear a slight reverb/echo sound which to me throws off the imaging and soundstage. I will admit when I first heard it (but I had junk equipt. and never heard imaging and soundstage) I kind of liked it. Today 30 years later it drives me crazy. I also ran unterminated speaker cables for over 20 years. I did strip back the wire by approx 3" every 5 years because of a slight oxidation. That could save a few bucks. Now I'm sure some will argue with me about lengths but again thats what I hear. With HT some processors will let you adjust the delay to compensate for the different lengths but thats typically a delay between front and rear channels.

Now to your question regarding cables - you are looking at approx $2 ft with 2 35 ft cables. Look for some closeout audioquest of maybe kimber 'bulk' cables. I would also look at the heavier gauge wire too with those lengths. Also if you do go with 2 35ft cables DO NOT coil up the shorter cable run (you just made a small transformer).

Depending how critical of a listener you are I (personally) find better speaker cables - interconnects - and lastly power cords will bring another notch up of detail, air, blackness, soundstage, depth and imaging. You have a nice system so far and cables is something to 'save' up for.

These are just my personal opinions. Good luck in your search and happy listening.

When I had to run cables that length, I built them like the "White Lightning" using a 100ft Home depot yard extension cord. It's yellow, the same mfg as the orange one but 12 gauge wire (I think the orange one is 14 gauge). It worked nicely and as I recall cost me ~$45 for the 100 ft cable. I terminated it with bananas that can be found in any style on ebay or you name it.

Yes, don't 'blind' your ears, go with Home Depot. Second yes, keep the lengths equal. I've had the ability to compare 12 gauge HD wire in my system with equal lengths of a pair of cables costing $5,500.00. No contest, HD sounded much better. The mid range particularly was better. If you do decide to fall off the cliff and go for a high end cable, find a dealer that will give you a loaner. Then do the HD compare.

Buconero17 and Bdgregory - very nice advice. It is refreshing to hear persons give advice that results in no waste of money on the part of the consumer. I can find no scientific reason to choose one cable over the other for the same guage wire or to choose silver, gold, titanium, uranium, lead, platinum, or any other metal over copper. Hence, buy the inexpensive copper cable. If you posed some of the questions you see on the web- i.e. should one pick the $25 per foot cable over the $20 per foot cable because the former "has more punch," to my former associates (spent many years as a practicing engineer working with other engineers, and yes, I mean engineers, we all had BSEE's or MSEE's, not guys with 'engineer' on their company shirt) I can picture the laughter, particularly if the explanations were included for why the expensive cables were better than the inexpensive cables. Anyway nice advice, you did a service to those who may otherwise needlessly waste money. I concur, go with the home depot stuff, good price, will work fine, and except for the placebo effect, it will sound as good as the $5000 cables. (actually to make the home depot sound even better than the $5000 cable, attach a price tag to each cable, highly visible, and write $6000 on the tag - wallah - a $6000 cable, a whole $1000 better than the $5000 cable and will really show itself when the amp is cranked all the way to eleven.