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Does speaker wire length matter?

Smash said:
Hmm, well I noticed a small delay in one of my outdoor speaker zones, I have the amps in the garage then there is one speaker with about 5 meters of wire to get to the one side, and 200m to get to the other side of our fire pit area, standing in the center of the two i can make out a very slight echo even when i switch the system to mono, both runs are using heavy duty outdoor phone line wire (solid copper)
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This is due to the sound traveling through the air, not the wire.
 
The only difference it makes is my own perception, the difference in resistance is insignifigant in your case. I made mine the same length because it just feels right, not beacause I honestly beleive it is necessary, but I only went 2 x 12'.
 
Never thought about that before. Makes sense that different lengths might make a difference.

I didn't measure when I cut my two speaker lengths, and it's an easier trip around the room on one side than it is on the other, but the lengths are pretty-close, plus the distance is probably no more than 15ft on either side. Besides, I used 14ga, so I doubt there's any problem. I do need to pick up some spades though, next time I'm down by Radio Shack.

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Listening to some Crystal Method (Mixed collection of movie tracks, B-sides, and assorted rarities)
2000x / MSII / W90's / :smoke: = Get Busy Time
 
so_ein_pech said:
Any echo is due to the fact that the speakers are so far apart, not cable lengths. You could use 200m of wire to connect both the near and the far speaker and you will likely experience the same effect.

Here's is my attempt to show this mathematically:

The speed an EM wavefront in copper is about 2/3 of the speed of light or about 2e8 m/s (200,000 km/s). This means that the sound that has to travel the extra 195m will be delayed by 9.75e-6 s or 975 nanoseconds. If the speed of sound in air is 343m/s, then the sound wave would travel about 3.3e-4 m or 0.33 mm in this time. This means that if you're head is more than .33 mm away from dead center between the two speakers, you will observe more delay than you would from a 200m cable lead (and if my calculations are correct).
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The biggest problem with doing such a thing is that the distance of 200 meters will introduce issues pertaining to the resistance, capacitance, and inductance of the wire. 200 meters is a long distance; for those unfamiliar with metric distances, 200 meters is 656 ft 2 1⁄32 in. Most likely, it is doing bad things to the frequency response of the sound from the speaker, though many outdoor speakers are so bad anyway that it might not be a big deal. It must be one huge fire pit to require that much wire to go around it.

Being outside, there could be an echo due to the sound bouncing off of a building or something. That can be tested by listening to only one speaker at a time, and observing whether or not one hears an echo with just one speaker playing.

Of course, you are right that the difference in distance of wire is trivial as far as sound delays are concerned.
 
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One would have to wrap the speaker wire to one channel about 5 times around the earth to introduce a ~1sec delay versus the other channel with a short run. ;)

az
 
Math, like facts, are stubborn things...and bring a sense of reality. A few extra feet would not induce nearly as large a "delay" as moving your speakers in and out a fraction of an inch. You couldn't get your speakers that close to equidistant from your ear, and if you did, the minute you moved, the "delay" will increase far more from sound travel than the electrical signal delay.

That said, my man cave system is powered by a 10wpc tube amp. Speaker wire on right channel is 20 feet.

Last night I changed from 16g lampcord to 12g speaker wire. I kept the lengths for both channels about the same when I changed. I figure I had the wire, why not reduce resistance?

It does seem to sound more open, but than moving my speakers a few inches in and out from the wall makes a far more significant change in soundstage and openness.
 
cgutz said:
Math, like facts, are stubborn things...and bring a sense of reality. A few extra feet would not induce nearly as large a "delay" as moving your speakers in and out a fraction of an inch. You couldn't get your speakers that close to equidistant from your ear, and if you did, the minute you moved, the "delay" will increase far more from sound travel than the electrical signal delay.

That said, my man cave system is powered by a 10wpc tube amp. Speaker wire on right channel is 20 feet.

Last night I changed from 16g lampcord to 12g speaker wire. I kept the lengths for both channels about the same when I changed. I figure I had the wire, why not reduce resistance?

It does seem to sound more open, but than moving my speakers a few inches in and out from the wall makes a far more significant change in soundstage and openness.
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In your case, could re-fastening the connections have helped? Groing from 16ga to 12 ga will a little more than halve the resistance, but it should already be plenty low for 16ga at this lenght. With tube amplifiers, esepecially SET, the high output impedance will normally swamp minute differences in cables.

I should speak, I'm running short runs of 8ga wire @ 0.01ohm. :) OTOH, I'm bi-amping my speakers and the woofer is direct on a high damping SS amp, so I'm really taking as much advantage as I can of it.

az
 
dumptruck said:
A 200m run is really a job for a 70V speaker (and amp).
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Yeah, who's got a system running that much cable? A prince in Dubai?

At the moment, speaker-cable-length is a non-issue with my setup, but next time I replace mine, I'll be sure to cut equal lengths (When I cut the cable-lengths last time, I basically just rolled it out along the path around the room and to my speakers... I wanted to make sure I had enough length before I cut it because I really couldn't go by measuring).

________________________________________________________

Listening to Billy Cobham's "Spectrum" (vinyl-rip from US 1st-pressing vinyl)
2000x / MSII / W90's / :smoke: = WWI flying ace
 
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