How does music "move" down a wire?

I have fretted about this in certain applications in the past and it has cost me in wasted lengths of speaker wire. I haven't ever noticed a difference in sound with differential lengths of wire, but since I was fretting about everything else, I thought I should worry about this too. Apparently not. Thanks again for your analysis.

You're welcome! Keep in mind, though, that my comment only addressed the question of arrival time differences.

If other parameters, such as resistance, inductance, capacitance, and possibly skin effect, are not small enough to be negligible in the longer cable (all of those effects are proportional to length) a length disparity could conceivably have audible consequences.

And of course there is also the practical factor of resale value being less if lengths are unequal.

The likelihood of those effects being audible, btw, besides being dependent on the design and length of the cable, is also highly dependent on speaker impedance, and the variations of speaker impedance with frequency. Everything else being equal, higher speaker impedance can be expected to result in smaller cable effects.

Best regards,
-- Al

Please, a follow-up question about signals "moving" through wire. I read that a signal takes the easiest path. If you pair two wires for, say, the positive run - one wire with fine strands, the other with large strands - will that create some difference in signal transfer, no difference, or will it provide more "bandwidth" for all frequencies?

I read that a signal takes the easiest path.

Hi Ken,

That's actually a bit of an oversimplification.

In the case of dc, if two parallel paths are present the current will divide up between the two paths in inverse proportion to the resistance of each path.

In the case of ac, the current will divide up between the two paths in inverse proportion to the impedance of each path, "impedance" at audio frequencies essentially being the combined effects of resistance, inductance, capacitance, and to a slight degree skin effect, at each particular frequency component that is present in the signal.

Paralleling two wires for each leg of the run will have the net effect of reducing overall resistance and inductance, and increasing capacitance. Except in extreme cases, capacitance is usually unimportant in a speaker cable, while resistance and inductance can be important.

Whether two parallel conductors would perform better than, worse than, or the same as a single conductor having the same values for those parameters is IMO probably not technically predictable, and experimental comparisons would probably give results that are both system-dependent and listener-dependent.

Best regards,
-- Al

Great job. I sat back and watched to see if anyone would tackle this one.

Public A ha moment - pretty clear to me now why performance of speaker wire is contingent on impedance curve of speakers, amplifier capability and properties, and to a lesser (or greater) degree, the sensitivities and proclivity of the listener. Given all this difficult to see how anybody could recommend gear and wire combinations without first hand (or ear) experience with all in specific set up. I got that as a matter of common sense previously, but this series of lectures provides some theoretical and practical foundation. Nice.