Uneven speaker cable lengths?

The difference, if any, in the sound quality as a results of unequal cable lengths, you know, given the near light speed of the electromagnetic wave down the cable would undoubtedly be overwhelmed by room anomalies, magnetic field interference produced by large transformers and speaker magnets, not to mention the induced magnetic fields in all cables and wires, RFI/EMI effects, incorrect speaker placement, fuses being installed backwards, cables and interconnects being installed backwards and a host of other things. Probably best to chill and let sleeping dogs lie.

Seems to me the small difference in cable length is likely irrelevant. Given the difference in spead of sound vs speed of electron flow, I would be more concerned if the speaker placement varied by more than 1/4 inch from each other.

Geoff & Zavato, while I agree completely with your bottom line conclusions (as stated in the last sentence of Geoff's post and the first sentence of Zavato's post), and I also agree completely that differences in the amount of time it takes for the signal to propagate from one end of each cable to the other are WAY too small to be relevant, in fairness I would point out that there are other factors which arguably may be involved.

Specifically, nearly all cable parameters and effects whose audible significance is either well established and quantifiable, or not so well established and/or not quantifiable and/or debatable, are or can be expected to be proportional to length. That includes resistance, inductance, capacitance, bandwidth, and the consequences, if any, of dielectric absorption, strand jumping, skin effect, and metal purity.

The only effects I can think of which might not be directly proportional to length are those which might result in the cable injecting spurious energy into the feedback loop of the amplifier, if it has one. Those would include antenna effects, and effects relating to "characteristic impedance." In those cases, as I see it, the relations between length, differences in length, and audible consequences, ***if any,*** would be system dependent, unpredictable, and essentially random.

Regards,
-- Al

Here is how I look it: Cables are reactive components (inductance, capacitance, resistance, plus dielectric and wire variables). This means a 2m and 3m will measure differently and since many folks claim to hear differences in just a few inches of cables, then the cables must be equal matched lengths. No, yes? YMMV.

I asked this question earlier and nobody responded. Has anybody heard a difference when using unmatched cable lengths? If the answer is no, then the whole question is effectively put to rest.