Silver vs. Copper, Effect of length

My experience ( so far ) tells me that you are better off with longer speaker cables and shorter interconnects. Besides my listening tests, there are also many technical reasons why this might work better. I don't know if you re-arranged your system to do this, but those changes should also be taken into consideration.

Every speaker cable has a characteristic impedance to it. Most of them are quite high compared to the output impedance of the amplifier and the nominal impedance of most speakers. As such, a longer cable with its' naturally higher impedance would act as somewhat of a "buffer" to the amp. This could be ESPECIALLY beneficial if your running a very low impedance speaker or one that is highly reactive ( i.e. e-stat's, etc..). If you happen to have a speaker that is both very low in impedance AND highly reactive, changing speaker cables can make a HUGE difference in performance. Tube amps are also HIGHLY sensitive to speaker cable changes, as their output impedance is already high to start with.

All of the various reasons presented above are why some cables work in system A but fall down hard in system b. It's all a matter of trial and error, system by system. Sean
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Ignatz, Sean; I'm sure you both know that conventional wisdom says you should use the shortest possible spkr. cables and long ICs if necessary. Both R. Vandersteen and S. McCormack recommend this. But I'll say that I really like my 14 ft. Syn. Res. spkr cables and 4 ft. Syn. Res. ICs.>BR<

But, I'm moving to bi-amping and can go to 3 ft. spkr cables, but 5M ICs. I'm planning on staying with my same brand ICs and spkr cables, just different lengths. Sean, any advise? BTW, I've come to respect your articulate and technically compelling posts. Thanks. Craig

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