I'm buying a big screen TV and have to move my audio gear to the corner of
my room. I'm seeking the forms opinions on weather I should cut my speaker
cables to length (one 10' and the other 2') or if I should keep them both
the same length and coil one.

sorry to start another wire thread but I haven't seen this covered

Thanks,
BBB

If you coil it, you'll create an inductor... probably not a good idea, although
in theory the inductance will be small.

maybe a zig-zag? :- )

_-_-bar

Typhoon News User wrote:

I'm buying a big screen TV and have to move my audio gear to the corner of
my room. I'm seeking the forms opinions on weather I should cut my speaker
cables to length (one 10' and the other 2') or if I should keep them both
the same length and coil one.

sorry to start another wire thread but I haven't seen this covered

Thanks,
BBB

"BEAR" wrote in message
...
If you coil it, you'll create an inductor... probably not a
good idea, although
in theory the inductance will be small.

If it's normal speaker wire it won't have an increase in
inductance. Since the two wires run in parallel the fields will
cancel. Now if you split the wires apart and loop the + wire in
a loop and the - wire in a loop then, yes, you will increase the
inductance...but who would do this?

Only if one pair is much, much longer than the other will there
be an audible issue. For example, if you have a 50 foot run of
18AWG (0.6 ohms) on one channel and 1 foot run on the other then
you will have about 0.6 dB volume imbalance at 100 watts (i.e.
the 1' will be 0.6dB louder than the 50'). With a 10' and 2' the
difference is 0.1dB at 100 watts or inaudible.

"Typhoon News User" wrote in message
...
I'm buying a big screen TV and have to move my audio gear to the
corner of
my room. I'm seeking the forms opinions on weather I should cut my
speaker
cables to length (one 10' and the other 2') or if I should keep them
both
the same length and coil one.

sorry to start another wire thread but I haven't seen this covered

This situation has been covered, here and elsewhere. The upshot is
that it makes no difference. Unless the cables are expensive and
already terminated, cut them to the proper length. If you feel you
might want to sell the wires at a later date, leaving them the same
length will improve their marketability.

Norm Strong

BEAR wrote in message ...
I'm buying a big screen TV and have to move my audio gear to the corner of
my room. I'm seeking the forms opinions on weather I should cut my speaker
cables to length (one 10' and the other 2') or if I should keep them both
the same length and coil one.

If you coil it, you'll create an inductor... probably not a good idea,
although in theory the inductance will be small.

No, coiling speaker wire will NOT create an inductor, if, by "speaker
wire", you mean anyting remotely approximating two-conductor parallel-
lead wire.

As inductance is the reactance caused by the storage of energy in a
magnetic field, consider what happens: by Kirchoff's law, you have
precisely the same current flowing in both conductors, the current
is flowing parallel, but in precisely opposite directions. The
current flowing in one direction creates a magnetic field of some
value B, and the precise same surrent flowing in the other direction
creates a magnetic field of exactly the same value B, but with precisely
the opposite orientation. The two fields cancel one another quite
nicely, leaving NO net field and thus NO increase in inductance as a
result.

Coil your speaker wi it will work just fine.

In article ,
Typhoon News User wrote:
I'm buying a big screen TV and have to move my audio gear to the corner of
my room. I'm seeking the forms opinions on weather I should cut my speaker
cables to length (one 10' and the other 2') or if I should keep them both
the same length and coil one.

Cut one if it's cheap wire. Otherwise coil it - you won't get enough
inductance from a couple loops to matter, and the resale value will be
preserved.

If the reistance of another 16' of wire (you have two wires totaling twice
the length of the cable) on one side is high enough ( 5% of the speaker's
minimum impedance is an accepted number; this would be a .4dB change) to
create an audible difference between the two sides, 20' of it is still going
to be producing frequency dependant deviations from flat response. If that
matters to you you'll use bigger wire that makes the problem go away; and if
not it doesn't matter.

You can pick your own threshold for audibility using

threshold = 20 log (speaker minimum impedance + wire resistance / speaker
minimum).

The effects of capacitance and inductance aren't significant enough to be
interesting.

Per foot resistance for copper wire as a function of gauge is as follows:

4 .000292
6 .000465
8 .000739
10 .00118
12 .00187
14 .00297
16 .00473
18 .00751
20 .0119
22 .0190
24 .0302
26 .0480
28 .0764

Personally, I used to keep a roll of generic 12 gauge speaker wire arround
because it's sufficient even for long runs (50 feet with a 4 Ohm minimum
impedance) and just .40 cents a foot. Now, I'll probably switch to using both
pairs of 14-4 inwall because I have a big roll, I can pull it through walls,
it's ellectrically no worse (11 gauge resistance but less inductance), and
even less expensive.

--
a href="http://www.poohsticks.org/drew/"Home Page/a
Life is a terminal sexually transmitted disease.

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 16:54:41 GMT, "Typhoon News User"
wrote:

Thanks BEAR,

Unfourtunatly I can't "zig-zag" because of space constraints. The wire would
end up being closer to power cables then I'd like.

If I were to use a 10ft cable on one channel and 2ft speaker cable on the
other in my stereo setup what effects would it have??

Unless you have speakers with less than 1 ohm load impedance, almost
certainly no audible difference at all.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering

In article ,
Typhoon News User wrote:
I'm buying a big screen TV and have to move my audio gear to the corner of
my room. I'm seeking the forms opinions on weather I should cut my speaker
cables to length (one 10' and the other 2') or if I should keep them both
the same length and coil one.

Why not do both - start out coiled, then go to the direct connection.

Mike Squires
--

Mike Squires ) 317 233 9456 (w) 812 333 6564 (h)
546 N Park Ridge Rd., Bloomington, IN 47408

In article ,
Typhoon News User wrote:
I'm buying a big screen TV and have to move my audio gear to the corner of
my room. I'm seeking the forms opinions on weather I should cut my speaker
cables to length (one 10' and the other 2') or if I should keep them both
the same length and coil one.

Why not do both - start out coiled, then go to the direct connection.

Mike Squires
--

Mike Squires ) 317 233 9456 (w) 812 333 6564 (h)
546 N Park Ridge Rd., Bloomington, IN 47408