Whats wrong with short cables?


Hello Fellow Audionuts!!!!

Just curious....

Why should speaker cables be 8 feet and over? I hear that sometimes shorter cables can cause blown tweets and such during extended guitar solo's and stuff like that.

I always kinda assumed the shorter the run the better.

Im researching into building my own Pre, SS Amps, Speakers, and cables. I was planning on running a stereo amp pair for each speaker and bi-amping them. The amplifiers will be on thier own stands between the pre/cdp/tuner and the speaker. That means i will have a speaker cable run of probably less than 4 feet.

Would it be better to tailor the legnth of the cable to the distance needed? or would it be better to use a cable over 8 feet in legnth and just have it coiled behind the speaker?
slappy
Drubin. Cannot say I liked the Goertz with either my Thiel 1.6 or Sonus Faber Guarnieri. They are warm and musical cables but obscure detail and roll-off the top compared with many other cables that I have tried with these speakers. I think you may be referring to Thiel 1.6 speakers. If so, I found the Audience cables good with them, similar in overall character to the Goertz but with a whole lot more detail and music coming through.
Red: Have you ever used any Nordost speaker cables? I'm wondering what your thoughts on those are as compared to the Goertz? Sean
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sean...I just finished wiring up a pair of MTM speakers using flat rectangular wire, Nordost I think. Each speaker had 5 wires, two ends, with two conductors...that makes 40 wire ends to strip off Teflon insulation. You have to do this carefully with an Xacto knife: can't use a wire stripper. What a job! This stuff better sound good.
Hi Sean

The only time I tried Nordost, I tried Red Dawn, SPM and Quattro Fil and they all sounded a little bleached through the mids to me. However that was with an older pair of Thiels and with some Martin Logans - neither of which were likely to be good choices with the Nordost. In other respects I found the nordost to have wonderful speed, like that saying of "getting out of the way of the music". Now that I have some Sonus Fabers, I have a hankering to try them again. What I am curretly using with them is a local (New Zealand) cable called Sinkylinks. It will not suit all systems, perhaps sounding lean or lacking bass. But with the right speaker they are magical, and the bass is stunning.

I reckon amp/cable/speaker synergy is at the heart of getting great sound and that there are many good cables that can be just the right thing in the right system. It shouldn't be that way - but it is. I think the main reason for this is that none of the components we can buy are anything like perfect - and balancing the foibles/weaknesses is critical to getting the music to flow.
Redkiwi: Actually I am using Thiel 2.4's. but your observations about the Goertz with Thiel is similar to what I experienced.