Speaker cable vs. interconnect cable length

Think about the length of line level signal cables used between microphones and recording equipment. Fifty feet or more. Obviously not a problem unless you have lousy wire or high impedance outputs.

Besides, having long interconnects qualifies you to argue about Balanced/Unbalanced.

Thanks everyone for your advice. It looks like short speaker cables (4' to 8' in length) and long interconnects (18' to 25' in length) is the concensus here. I hope the sound is not affected by the long interconnect length. FYI, I will be running interconnects to three monoblock amps for the L/C/R front speakers.

I recently went through this same debate, and went with 40' balanced interconnects. I was nervous when I fired it up, as I had a fair amount of time in running the wire and terminating the ends. The good news is that it sounds great, not noticeably different than 3' interconnects.

- Eric

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Icsi,
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If you are going to go with long IC's, you should get balanced interconnects.
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Just get decent cables. I wouldn't worry so much about interconnect length. In my experience, a 3ft IC will be noticeably better than one that is 20ft. But it's not like the sound deteriorated into something unbearable. In fact, you'll probably lose a bit of dynamics and sound a bit rolled off "in comparison" that's all.