Does unequal speaker wire length matter?

Not every speaker cable manufacturer states that each leg of the cable be the same length. Alpha-Core states on its web site that their Goertz speaker cable does not have to be of equal length on each leg. My own personal experience has been that as long as the cables are relatively short (less than 15 feet), you will hear no audible difference between unequal lengths, PROVIDED the speaker cable has relatively low impedance.

High impedance in speaker cables causes frequency shifts, so it is possible that some "golden ears" could hear this frequency change with high impedance speaker cables. Of course, if a speaker cable has a high impedance, it's not particularly well suited to its task, and you'd be better off with another kind that follows good electrical design principles.

Timing will be off? Unless the disparity is great, you will never hear a difference. Keep them the same length and avoid pangs of audiophile neurosis. It's all in your head anyway.

Sd hit it right on the head. Kudo's to him for taking into account the variables involved i.e. the actual electrical characteristics of the cables being used and how they will affect the system ( tonal characteristics and power transfer ) as a whole.

Other than that, i would try to stick with the same length if economically possible. If you ever want to change these cables for some reason, it might be difficult to sell such an odd configuration. After all, you are talking about 3+ feet on one side and 13+ feet on the other side. If you are worried about this, there are "decent" speaker cables that offer a low nominal impedance and can be bought for pennies on the dollar ( compared to "audiphile approved" brands ). This will give you solid performance with minimal potential for loss of investment should something change in the future. Sean
>

FWIW...One ohm of wire resistance is worth almost exactly 2dB when driving a 4 ohm speaker.

AWG #10 wire is 0.001018 ohms per foot. Ten extra feet of wire is worth 0.01018 ohms, and the resulting attenuation is 0.02 dB.

El: I think that most people are using speaker cables of 12 to 16 gauge on average with quite a few at the 13-14 gauge area. Couple the higher series resistance with a slightly inductive load and a higher nominal impedance ( 40 - 100 ohms ) and you'll have more realistic results. All of this is a moot point if using a cable that was properly designed for the application. Sean
>