Equal Length Speaker Wire???

In a lab environment I'm sure the right test gear can measure a difference. But its doubtful the average person can actually hear it. At least in the confines of the average household room. When you get to auditorium and stadium size venues...then clearly its going to become a factor.

Speaker to power amplifier cable length will make absolutely no sonic difference with only a 3 foot difference in length. Now if you enter the theater of the absurd and compare a 10 foot length for one channel and a 10 mile length for the other, then there clearly will be differences. Depending on the quality of your speakers and amplifier, you may have significantly less than optimal sound if you use undersized wire, but even here you have to get some absurdly thin wires for a noticeable difference for most people. 18AWG lamp cord for 10 foot lengths will work fine. Just be careful to get the polarity of the speakers correct or you will lose a lot of the low frequencies. But you knew that already.

This may be of interest. Then again, you may already be aware of this.

Impedance Matching of Audio Components

I can tell you from practical experience that cables that are too big are far better than cables that are too small.

Easy to tell the difference if you have the Golden ear . Else ...

I have a Leaden ear.

That's the lyn I once liked. Most can't understand a good ironic comment if it kicked them in the butt.

Yep but stupidity substance keeps Newtonian properties at speeds considerably faster than light. You can't imagine cash spent pursuing similar myths? S.M.

Yep, and don't even get me started on the morons that claim that you must use specially woven Litz wire and crap due to some claimed "skin effect" at audio frequencies...

http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2007/10/hear_hear_james.html

There are many products on the market that offer no auditory benefit (and in many cases no measurable benefit).

http://www.switched.com/2009/10/28/the-laughable-147-audio-grade-power-outlet/

A simple search of the internet produced many companies like this offering to take peoples money including this one that seriously reads like an obvious pseudoscience scam.

http://www.voodoocable.net/VAPA.htm

And the big one - cryogenically treated audio cables for superior audio quality (last time I checked the price it was about $10,000 per cable).

At this price at least this last one is not going to take the hard-earned money out of the average gullible low to middle income person's pocket.

''...the speed of electrons in wire is practically the speed of light...'

The speed of electrons in wire is no where near the speed of light.

Electrons move through speaker wire considerably more slowly than light traveling through any medium of which I am aware.

As an example the speed of electrons moving with a 10 amp current through a copper wire of 1mm^2 area cross section will be around a millimeter per second.

While it is correct that the signal, being an EM wave, propagates at speeds similar to that of light (leading to the same conclusion to the OP's question), it does not mean the electrons are traveling at nearly the speed of light.

The heat produced an energy required to attain reletivistic speeds for electrons in copper wire would be too great for any existing or practical audio equipment.

You are correct. (And I knew that--I guess I just decided not to try to explain it that way--unfortunate phrasing on my part, I should have said that the electrical signal in the wire propagates at nearly the speed of light.)

Hmm, but how fast are the electrons traveling in their orbits around their protons?

Anyway, I gave you a GA to at least counteract the OT that somebody else gave you.

'....Hmm, but how fast are the electrons traveling in their orbits...'

:-)

I like that. Deserving of a GA. And it is a good point to consider.

It turns out the fastest electrons move (in a classical sense approximation) while normally orbiting is less than a couple percent the speed of light.

So I'll grant 'relativistic', but if 1% of something is 'practically' the whole thing, I have some practically brand new items to sell you (although I'd prefer avoiding any dispute about only receiving practically the entire payment).

You are correct. The speed of "electrons" in wire is very slow. The speed of "electricity" in wire however, is exactly equal to C, the speed of light. My typing fingers outran my brain.

'...The speed of electricity in wire is exactly equal to C the speed of light....'

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Assuming you are referring to C the speed of light in a vacuum, I still disagree. Although the speed of propagation of the signal is much faster than the drift of electrons, it still falls short of being '... exactly equal to C the speed of light'...in a vacuum.

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The speed of signal propagation depends heavily on the insulation.

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In 'uninsulated' copper, that is copper surrounded by air, propagation can approach 99% of the speed of light in a vacuum.

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With typical insulation, speeds are significantly slower...almost certainly below 80% of the speed of light in a vacuum.

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While these are still very fast, and lead to the same answer to the OP's original question for all practical scenarios, saying the speed of electricity in typical conductors is 'exactly equal to C' isn't exactly correct.

Well my quagmire here is to believe you or the physicists... hmmmmm....try this article.

Believe the Electrical Engineers and not the Physicists. This is a transmission line problem with distributed inductances and capacitances that store the energy of the wave. The Wave propagation speed (aka velocity factor) is then calculated as a fraction of the speed of light in a vacuum (c). In a loss less transmission line the velocity factor is VF= 1/(c√(LC)) with L being the distributed inductance (Henrie/unit length) and C being the distributed capacitance.

Thanks for the info. I guess the net is crawling with junk science.

Never a truer word was spoken.

Which "physicists"?

Probably the Physicist teaching electricity to an eighth grade student.

The slightly longer wire length would cause a slight delay in the sound being emitted from the speaker, which would consequently result in ever so slight out of phase waves in the superposing between the two sets of waves. This would cause the music to be heard at a slightly lower volume than if the speakers were heard separately, this is of course taking the assumption that both speakers would still be running at the same voltage; which in real world circumstances would not make a difference.

But also in real world circumstances, I'm sure it would make no difference to the listening enjoyment whatsoever... I have 3 speakers connected to a sound system, one with a 6ft wire, one with 15 and one with 20ft and there is no difference in sound quality or listening enjoyment.

No. You would also be hard pressed to measure any difference even in a controlled lab environment with sensitive calibrated equipment.

You have heard wrong. I have 50 feet of monster cable ($1.00/foot). I got it for free and cannot hear any difference between that and #18 lamp cord. In a laboratory setting, you may see differences as viewed on an oscilloscope, but there would not be any difference you could actually hear. No two matched speakers are exactly the same, as there are too many variables to deal with. The high end audio industry has been selling the public a load of crap. They actually sell equipment that costs 5 figures. I had a Dynaco amplifier many years ago that I bought for less than $200. That was a lot of money for me at the time. Years later, an audio expert did some tweaking on that amplifier and made it perform like one costing 10x more. He spent only a few dollars on the upgrade. BTW, my hearing is excellent. My wife says it's too good.

Anytime you hear something that seems reasonable from an "Audiophile" quickly reread "The Emperors new clothes" until the confusion passes.

There is no: "without voltage drops", so please specify or calculate!

Or use superconducting cables.

I assume that in any real application the cabling resistance is important.

RHABE

RHABE I think the OP meant appreciable voltage drops.

It's not an issue. Just make sure your headers are equal length to get the best scavenging at high RPMs

The two speakers on my Hi-Fi system have different lengths of cable, the left one is 12 ft long while the right one is 18ft long, and there is no difference whatever in sound quality!

Spencer.

Hey, thanks to everyone that posted a response! I figured it was probably BS, but I also know that if it wasn't, you guys could explain it to me. This is another subject question, but since I have the attention of people who know audio, let me put it to you. I have Mission brand speakers, which like some other speakers do not have a cover on the voice coil. It has a conical piece that protrudes into the cone area of the speaker. Now I've heard that sound waves reflect off it and it makes the speaker sound better, but I think that's BS. What I do suspect, though, is speakers that have a cover over the voice coil actually create vacuum or pressure between the cover and the voice coil as it operates, and that may act as a damper. Speakers like mine would not be impeded by this, and so should sound crisper. Then again, is it such a small area compared to the rest of the area that the speaker is trying to move that it doesn't matter?

Like so many other design tweaks and gimmicks in audio sound reproduction, the use of a different-shaped cone may effect speaker frequency response but you would need to compare the frequency response graphs of different speakers to be able to tell the difference (unless the gimmick made the sound worse, and by worse I also include altering the sound to the extent that is noticeably different which is not what you really want in accurate sound reproduction, that's what the graphic equaliser is for).

What I do suspect, though, is speakers that have a cover over the voice coil actually create vacuum or pressure between the cover and the voice coil as it operates, and that may act as a damper.

Speakers need to have some level of dampening designed in to them to prevent unwanted oscillation or ringing of the voice coil. The speaker is a sound reproduction device, not a musical instrument after all.

Yes, those are what I'm refering to. My mission drivers don't "ring", and they don't have a dust cover.

There is a very slight theoretical advantage to the bullet point dust cover instead of the dome. A bullet cone is stiffer. I suspect that this is a greater advantage when people stick their fingers on the dust cover preventing an unsightly dimple from happening instead of a real sonic quality. For some reason some people just like to push that little cover.

The bullet point is not really a dust cover, and it doesn't move with the speaker cone. If anyone does happen to have a speaker with a pushed-in dome, it can be sucked back out.

Uh, having reconed several speakers myself I can tell you for a fact that you are incorrect, the dust cover DOES move with the cone, it is glued to the I.D. of the voice coil form. It MUST move with the cone.

never mind, I just saw the first one of this series and realized you are talking about an oddball design.

These are called phase plugs. It's not really an oddball design, they are getting very common now, and they can be retro-fitted to existing speakers. The idea is that they should extend high-frequency response by preventing short waves (high-frequency) produced near the apex of the cone from cancelling each other out. I don't know if it works or not, but some people reckon they are good.