ok to loop excess speaker cable?

ncstatesman

Howdy out there, this probably belongs in the technical section. . . . . . but anyways, I wanted to cut several feet of excess cable for each speaker connection so that when I move to another house w/a larger living room I can reuse the same speaker cable (monster cable is not cheap).

Therefore, is it ok to loop/coil the excess wire, ie, will this introduce any magnetic effects (or whatever) that would hurt the sound quality?

Thanks,
Angel

juice21

having excess speaker cable looped/coiled shouldn't have any negative effects on the sound signal other than the excess length. it is optimal to have maybe 1 meter of 'play' in your cable for small moves/modifications, but i understand your need to not want to hack up expensive cable when you are planning to move to a larger place. just be sure that both lengths are equal, and don't coil it tightly as to promote possibly crimping or permanent distortioning to the cables.

ncstatesman

Hey Juice,

Thanks - that helps alot, especially the advice about keeping equal lengths to avoid the 'time delay' effects.

Angel

PETERNG

You don't need to have the equal lengths on your speaker cable, the sound moves at super fast speed; therefore, there will be no "time delay" effects whatsoever. Try to keep the length to the minimum distance, depend on the quality of your cable, longer distance from speakers to your amp or receiver may reduce the sound quality of your system.

ncstatesman

Peter, man that was a dumb remark by me about 'time-delay' given how fast electrons travel - I should no better. I guess I was parroting something I read on-line about length of speaker wire and time delay or something like that.

By the way, I bought a Digital SPL meter from radio shack that I will use in helping me set up my new system . .might you know if I should I use the 'A' or 'C' setting?

Thanks,
Angel

PETERNG

See your other post.:cool:

RuSsMaN

Aaron and I were discussing this and we both think you will introduce an amount of capacitance and inductance in the system through coiling wire, vs not.

I'm searching for data to back this up, and whether or not it would be an audible difference......

Cheers,
Russ

jcaut

I have heard that it is a bad idea to coil up excess wire. I've heard two reasons for this:

1.) There are lots of magnetic fields associated with a typical sound system. Magnetic fields interacting with the coiled-up wire will cause current to be induced in the wire (like a generator). This would seem to me to be much more of a problem with low level signal interconnects than with speaker wire.

2.) Coiled up wire can act as an antenna and pick up RF signals. Looks like it would have to be rather strong RF radiation, though, and straight wire might pick it up as well.

Anyway, that's what I've heard. It's supposed to be better to minimize excess wire and then just let it lie, not coil it up.

Jason

ncstatesman

Jason, Russman,

Thanks for the feedback . . . this is somethingto think about - perhaps instead of coiling I can 'meander' it under the couches and rugs - we'll see.

Thanks,
Angel

George Grand

Jason is definitely on the money. Coil up your excess, and you can pick up radio stations while listening to your cd player.

George Grand (of the Jersey Grand's)

jcaut

I got the antenna info primarily from George...