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Anonymous | i have a 5.1 surround setup. Do all the speakers wire lengths have to be the same lenght? If they are diffent lenghts will the sound be off? Should your front 3 be the same, and the surrounds longer? What if one front speaker is 9ft length and the other front speaker is 25ft length? Will that cause problems? Any help would be greatly appreciated |
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Silver Member Username: TdogroederDes Moines, IA Post Number: 109 Registered: Sep-05 | Yes. It will take longer for your signal to travel 25 feet vs. 9 feet and your signal will be off. I would keep the center channel the same length as the front right and left speaker. |
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Silver Member Username: TdogroederDes Moines, IA Post Number: 110 Registered: Sep-05 | Keep the surround speakers the same length as eachother, but they will certainly need much longer speaker wire than the fronts. They don't need to be the same length as the front and right and center. |
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Silver Member Username: My_rantzAustralia Post Number: 317 Registered: Nov-05 | http://www.trueaudio.com/post_008.htm |
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Silver Member Username: TdogroederDes Moines, IA Post Number: 112 Registered: Sep-05 | http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#wiretable |
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Silver Member Username: DakulisSpokane, Washington United States Post Number: 836 Registered: May-05 | Just don't make them too short, it's a killer trying to stretch those puppies after you're a foot or two short. Otherwise, I think TDog is pulling your chain, so to speak, right T? |
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Silver Member Username: Timn8terSeattle, WA USA Post Number: 798 Registered: Dec-03 | "It will take longer for your signal to travel 25 feet vs. 9 feet and your signal will be off." "I think TDog is pulling your chain,.." I hope so. Otherwise, I'd love to see some empirical evidence. |
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Silver Member Username: TdogroederDes Moines, IA Post Number: 113 Registered: Sep-05 | NOt really guys. To me its logic that the signal will be off a little bit by different lengths. Maybe I'm wrong about it. |
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Silver Member Username: My_rantzAustralia Post Number: 319 Registered: Nov-05 | I have about 12-15 ft difference between the wire lengths on my rear speakers as I did not want a heap of coiled wire and I hear no offset or degregation whether it be movies or multi-channel sacd or dvd-a. I don't know the speed of which a signal travels through a wire, but I doubt any man made machine could beat it. |
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Silver Member Username: Timn8terSeattle, WA USA Post Number: 799 Registered: Dec-03 | Electricity doesn't work that way. The only difference of any significance in this case is the resistance in the wire. The link My Rantz posted above is correct. |
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Silver Member Username: DakulisSpokane, Washington United States Post Number: 837 Registered: May-05 | I think that Tim and MR are correct, too. The resistance is so negligible that it simply won't matter. But then again, I'm about 25 plus years removed from my physics classes, and physics has probably changed since the ice age. LOL |
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Silver Member Username: My_rantzAustralia Post Number: 326 Registered: Nov-05 | Dave - you're that old! Sheesh, join the club :-) |
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Silver Member Username: GmanMt. Pleasant, SC Post Number: 856 Registered: Dec-03 | Electricity moves far too fast to have any audible effect in different length wires, as long as you aren't listening on the moon. As long as one gets adequate diameter wire and buys speakers that don't dip to 2 ohms and under, one shouldn't have wire problems. You never want the wire impedance to get close to the speaker impedance. There are sites that show what your wire diameter should be for the length of run to your speakers. |
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Gold Member Username: Frank_abelaBerkshire UK Post Number: 1220 Registered: Sep-04 | The front three speakers should be the same length. The rear two should be the same length as each other but do not need to be the same length as the fronts. Resistance differences are negligible for ordinary wire in lengths under 10m. Resistance is not the only thing that counts here. Impedance is a more interesting measure and is slightly higher but again not of much significance. When using significantly different lengths of wire (e.g. 5m and 3m) left to right, you introduce phase variances which are significant which becomes fairly obvious when you listen to that scenario. It's most apparent with stereo music being played. Regards, Frank. |
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Bronze Member Username: Kfree1966Post Number: 13 Registered: Jan-06 | Frank, Frist, How do you heard the phase shifts? Second I am unable to have the speakers equal distance from the receiver. Playing 2 channel audio only. Was planning on ordering both cables same length but run one in a snake patten to take up the slack without coiling the cable. The length difference is about 3 meters. Is there any perferred way to handle the situation? Thanks |
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Gold Member Username: NuckParkhill, Ontario Canada Post Number: 1481 Registered: Dec-04 | Kevin, firstly understand that Frank is working in an ideal environment for his work setups. The ideal triangle placements and rear clearance provide an ideal listening environment for audiophyles. That understood, if you consider yourself an audiophyle, you might want to experiment. If you just like good music(like me), it doesn't matter. |
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Bronze Member Username: Kfree1966Post Number: 14 Registered: Jan-06 | Thanks, On the good music first and audiophyle second path. |
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Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 7719 Registered: May-04 | Kevin - If you would like to hear phase shift manifested by altering time constants in one channel only, here's something you might try. Set your speakers up (two channel only) as an equilateral triangle with your listening position at the top (narrow end) of the three corners. Try to place the speakers about 6-8' apart and angled in toward your chair so you only see the front of the speaker enclosure, no sides showing here. When the speakers are equal distance from you, listen to some simple, well recorded music. No hard rock or metal, just something like a trio doing something "pretty". Then switch to a stereo FM station with a single announcer's voice (unless you happen to have your collection of mono Gene Krupa recordings handy; they'll do too). Pay attention to how the sound "sounds". Listen for where sounds sem to come from between and around the speaker locations. If the music is well recorded and the FM station coming in clearly, you should get an idea of where the performers were located when the music was in production and the announcer should be center stage. Now, move just one of the speakers about two to three feet forward toward your listening position and again point it toward your chair. Repeat the same music and announcer. Things should sound slightly "off" from the more correct, first position. This example is a bit more dramatic and obvious in the amount of phase shift present than having a few extra feet of cable, but it should give you an idea of what you are trying to avoid. If you cannot hear the difference between the two positions, don't worry. Place your speakers where they look best and occasionally repeat this test. On the day you finally notice the difference, march down to the nearest Best Buy and standing in the middle of the audio department announce, "I AM AN AUDIOPHILE!!!" Good luck. |
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Silver Member Username: PraetorianCanada Post Number: 109 Registered: Dec-05 | =D Or you could jump into a pool full of sharks bleeding! I don't know BB from experience, but if the clerks work on commission, after he does that he will go home with a maxed out credit card, and two trips to take all the power conditioners, and Monster Ultra THX cables (HDMI, component, digi-optical/coax etc). |
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Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 7753 Registered: May-04 | No need to worry. The audio consultants employed by BB have no idea what an audiophile is. |
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Bronze Member Username: N8d1Baltimore Post Number: 45 Registered: Jan-06 | Jan, I respect your posts and think you know your stuff and have some very informative knowledge to add but your last post raised an eyebrow with me. I'm not an audiophile or an electrical engineer (although I do have a background in electronics), but are you sure it's an accurate comparison to measure speaker cable length to speaker position? I would think that once the signal leaves the speaker and is traveling through the air as sound, you have other factors involved that just the signal traveling through a wire. I would think there would be a much more noticeable difference in speaker distance than the same distance added or subtracted from a cable. So, I wouldn't think that a few extra feet of cable would directly correlate to a speaker seeming (or sounding) as if it was further away. See where I'm coming from? Also, not to pick apart your comments or anything, but with your statement "If the music is well recorded and the FM station coming in clearly, you should get an idea of where the performers were located when the music was in production and the announcer should be center stage." I understand what you are trying to get across but there is no way to tell where someone was "standing" when the music was produced. Most of the time pieces of the music, including vocals and different parts of the vocals, are recorded at different times onto different tracks and then mixed later on. During post-production, the producer can mix whatever track into whatever channel he wishes. Now if you know that something was produced "live" in stereo and with no post-production, then yeah, your statement works. |
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Silver Member Username: PraetorianCanada Post Number: 113 Registered: Dec-05 | Not that Jan needs a defender or anything, but in your first para, I read that to actually be Jan's point. Kevin didn't even know what he was suppose to be listening for, so Jan gave him an exaggerated frame of reference to begin trg his ear to recognise phase shifting. As well I believe engineers attempt to reproduce the sound stage in well recorded products, but the point is not so much that he gets an accurate picture of the stage per se, but what the sound is supposed to be vice out-of-phase. There is a difference between being precise in yur language and picking fly crap out of pepper. |
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Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 7757 Registered: May-04 | From my post: "This example is a bit more dramatic and obvious in the amount of phase shift present than having a few extra feet of cable, but it should give you an idea of what you are trying to avoid." ND - Thank you for respecting my posts. I'm usually quite proud of them myself! If you have a better example which would give someone an idea of time distorted phase shifts, please enter it now in the space provided. I had a chuckle, privately, of course, when Kevin asked, "How do you heard the phase shifts?", because the time difference in three extra feet of cable is inaudible. We all know that; but Kevin was asking for an example. I thought a gross exageration of time induced phase shift was the best way to start someone off rather than suggesting they, "pay particular attention to the timbral accuracy of the bassoon's mid-upper harmonic register when playing in contrapuntal modalities, an especially difficult instrument to get temporally correct under such countervailing circumstances." Further I informed Kevin that what he would be hearing was a "bit more dramatic and obvious in the amount of phase shift present than having a few extra feet of cable." ND, sir, you must be a politician or an evangelist. You print my exact quote and then, for your own benefit, you alter it presuming no one, including myself, will notice. Let's set the record straight. I posted, " ... you should get an idea of where the performers were located when the music was in production ...", and you want people to think I said, " ... tell where someone was 'standing' when the music was produced". How much explanation is required here? Despite the fact that too many contemporary recordings are made from bits and pieces gathered up to construct a slightly to credibly believeable entity, what you ingraciously suggested and what I carefully intended are two different things, ND. In my statement the "performer" is the sound of the instrument or voice, and is used as a simple shorthand to connote this association rather than stringing together a series of words that would only confuse the main point of the sentence. None the less, if the producer/engineer has 64 tracks of recorded bits, those bits all get pieced together and, if the music is well recorded (a subjective quality, I admit, but one any audiophile has in their head to some degree), the end result is a final product where the performers have been "located" on a real or imaginary soundstage. I think my statement encompasses both real and man made situations, while yours, ND, does not. You are correct that we don't know where anyone was "standing" when the music was "produced". Thus connotating the entirity of the act which we term "production". Production being the actual process, which can sometimes takes several months, of assembling the bits into a credible whole. In fact, I assume a few people were probably sitting or leaning against something during the entire process. Possibly one or more were scampering about retrieving the bits that would be used to "locate" the performers on our real or imaginary soundstage. Some getting coffee or having a smoke while the music is being "produced". Some even enjoying basic bodily functions. So, you are correct, unless I'm provided a photograph of the production studio at one moment during the production process, I have no idea where anyone would have been "standing" during the entire process. (I suppose on much broader terms, if we know where the album was produced, assuming it was produced in one location (not a safe bet for most recordings today), we could use the geographic terminology of longitude, latitude and minutes/seconds to say someone was standing in, let's say, Memphis, but that seems to be quiet a reach for our example; don't you think?) However, if the music is well recorded (which as the final consumer we automatically include the production work's end product recording into that term), we should be able to get an idea where, during production, the "performer" was "located". I hope this dissolves any further confusion. |
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Bronze Member Username: N8d1Baltimore Post Number: 46 Registered: Jan-06 | Michael, you're right, Jan doesn't need a defender. He does just fine on his own. |
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Bronze Member Username: N8d1Baltimore Post Number: 47 Registered: Jan-06 | Jan, thanks for the clarification. I did misread your post and unfortunately missed the the purpose of the exmaple. I don't have a better example...yours is as good as any. I guess when you said "it should give you an idea of what you are trying to avoid", to me, it seems as if you imply that this is something he should be concerned with when considering his cable length when really, it's no issue at all unless they are rediculously off. ...and I don't even know when that might be. I'm not a politician (yuck) or evangelist and it wasn't an intentional alteration...just the way your post read to me. Thanks again for the clarification.....and well writen it was. |
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Gold Member Username: Jan_b_vigneDallas, TX Post Number: 7758 Registered: May-04 | Okey dokey then. |
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Gold Member Username: PetergalbraithRimouski, Quebec Canada Post Number: 1482 Registered: Feb-04 | My rule of thumb used to be that if the wire is cheap enough, cut R and L in equal lengths. Since the advent of surround, and the fact that I run wires through the walls and the runs are longer, I only use as much as I need for each channel and couldn't care less about the length difference. The speakers image just fine. |
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Silver Member Username: DakulisSpokane, Washington United States Post Number: 843 Registered: May-05 | "pay particular attention to the timbral accuracy of the bassoon's mid-upper harmonic register when playing in contrapuntal modalities, an especially difficult instrument to get temporally correct under such countervailing circumstances," I think that was implicit in your first statement, wasn't it, Jan? LOL WMCOMN |
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Gold Member Username: NuckParkhill, Ontario Canada Post Number: 1569 Registered: Dec-04 | Sheet, dude, it souds just peachy, with the lengths I run. Temporal, yadda hadda, wooda cooda, yammer. It's all crap. |
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Gold Member Username: NuckParkhill, Ontario Canada Post Number: 1570 Registered: Dec-04 | If'n y'all be sweatin' this kinda' detail, then y'all'n got too much time on y'err hands, and oughta be getin' a new hoppy. |
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Gold Member Username: NuckParkhill, Ontario Canada Post Number: 1571 Registered: Dec-04 | Welcome to Kerwood, Ontario, Canada. |