speaker cable; what to do?

Yes you really need to try some real speaker cables. Contact Bob Cohen at Cable Company www.fatwyre.com for suggestions regarding what to try out &/or for some of their loaner cables to experiment with. For a length that long, a networked cable would likely work better. Transparent makes the very expensive ones & MIT makes the affordable ones. Joe Abrams (membername = joeabrams) can help with great advice, recommendations, & great pricing on MIT. Be aware though that networked cables take a lot of bashing from the un-initiated; I laughed too until I tried some, but then I bought more.
Also try out some loaner upgrade AC cords from Cable Company, per their rec's. When you find the right cords for your setup, everything will improve including bass, stage & image etc.
Also get some good contact cleaner for all your connections if you haven't been doing so already. Kontact is my favorite; there are several others to chose from.

Cornfedboy has his opinion and I have mine. There is no point belittling anyone's opinion otherwise forums would not exist. Try different cables and see for yourself.

There is a difference but my point is that $8000 cables (Kharma Reference) did not sound hardly better (i.e. much less than 40 times - like maybe 1.5 times) than my $200 MITs. Consequently, I admit that Wal-Mart speaker wire does not sound far better than my MITs (perhaps 3 or 4 times) but this difference was worth the money I was willing to spend. That is the key and is obvious in all situations. I am an electronics engineer and have even tested cables with a precision oscilloscope and impedance calculations and find small differences. AS A LAST NOTE, THIS IS MY OPINION and am not belittling anyone else's no matter how moronic it is.

By the way, I agree contact cleaner and paste is a good idea.
Arthur

oh man this is getting painful...
little difference between zip cord & Grand Reference?
...sure sounds moronic to me...
No doubt this is based upon extensive experience; & how does that scope sound anyway?

Hi George: Any way possible to shorten the speaker cable runs (considerably) without increasing the IC length (@ all and/or very little)? This configuration will give you better sound and will also make it much less painful to invest in better speaker cables. Also what is the budget? Sorry, I do not have any experience with cable runs this long.

I agree with ALL of the above. Now let me tell you truth : )

Keep ALL of your cables as short as possible ( within reason ).

If you must use long speaker cables ( more than about 10' at most ), use something other than a side by side design ( aka zip cord, lamp cord, monster type, twin-lead, etc..) for best results. That type of design is best suited for low frequency response at the expense of other frequency ranges. While You DO have to worry about the gauge, but you also have to worry about other electrical measurements such as inductance, capacitance, nominal impedance, etc... I would suggest something that was of a heavy gauge i.e. at least 12 gauge and of low inductance. Something along the lines of Audioquest, Axon, XLO, Kimber, Nordost, etc... all make good yet reasonably priced stuff. Each brand and model may have their own "flavour", so talk to someone that is knowledgable before buying or try with the option to buy ala "The Cable Company".

Make sure that all of your connections are clean and tight. This means on all of your component cables and at the amp and speakers. If you have nothing to clean them with ( Q tips and a high purity rubbing alcohol will work if nothing else ), then simply remove them and re-insert them into the proper places. This will break up any oxidation or corrosion that is taking root and re-seat all of the contacts to fresh metal. Careful routing of signal cables away from power cords should also be done at this time.

Spend the necessary amount of time placing the speakers for optimum performance. There are a LOT of different approaches on how to do this, so do some reading on the various websites that are available. Speaker placement is one of the biggest factors in the overall tonal balance and spacial characteristics of your system.

Disregard all of the comments here ( mine included ) and enjoy your tunes and system : ) Sean
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