Longer Speaker Cable or RCA: Which is Better?

Night and day in audio means a noticeable difference, might be small, medium or large, just that it's noticeable.

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F1nut wrote: »

Night and day in audio means a noticeable difference, might be small, medium or large, just that it's noticeable.

That's exactly what my thoughts were. After all, just as in dawn and dusk, there are varying degrees of night turning to day, and day turning to night, correct? It doesn't all of a sudden go from daytime to nighttime instantly; that is, there are varying degrees of day turning to night, and night turning to day. It is/are these varying degrees that determine the small, medium, or large noticable differences.

Of course, it depends upon the audio aspects (typically based upon the piece of gear in question) in question that determine how mach variation will be evident in what the listener hears.

@WilliamM2, it's only meaningless if you cannot hear the difference. Otherwise, the term has substantial meaning to those that can hear a difference.

You guys are night and day in your hearing abilities.

It's a self-fixing dilemma if you have enough audio experience. I know if someone says their $600 DAC is a "HUGE IMPROVEMENT" over their $400 DAC, they are either full of sht, just overly excited, or have a broken $400 DAC. I have compared $120 CD players to $1800 DAC's and indeed heard "significant" improvements---they weren't "huge" by any stretch of the imagination. Again, context, experience, and the author of the review all need to be taken into account.

Having said all that, I believe speakers may qualify for the "huge improvement" observation; but not much else when speaking in relative terms.

txcoastal1 wrote: »

...a little subtle this and little subtle that, it can all add up to a dream system

Amen! That's part of what makes this such a fun hobby. I've made mostly subtle improvements to my system over the past 5-6 years and I've enjoyed the thrill of each improvement. Few, if any, of my changes were jaw dropping, but to compare the system I have now to the one I had 6 years ago would be no contest.

txcoastal1 wrote: »

...a little subtle this and little subtle that, it can all add up to a dream system

Bingo....add them up and you could have a totally different system on your hands. Audio is so personal to each of us, it's more of a journey than just plopping down a set of speakers and hooking up any xyz receiver.

Only by way of personal exploration can you arrive at those "ah ha " moments. When you stick your hand in your pants and only count one instead of 2.

Keiko wrote: »

Rich, I have this high end cable stretcher that's extremely effective.

Damn, your cable stretcher is much better than mine!

I'll repeat my actual experience with long RCA IC's. They were in close proximity to one 20 amp power cable run from wall on right to the two amps in center between speakers. Pre amp was single ended ModWright SWLP 9.0SE pre amp.

Longer speaker cables would not be a solution in my old setup. IF I put the gear between speakers on that south wall, digital or vinyl wouldn't sound good due to the bass loading that occurred when speakers are boxed by corners. Talk about vibes, bad vibrations. Gear, except for amps, had to be on west wall. I could not play anything above 75dB with gear between speakers on that south wall. Had tube CD/SACD player, tube pre amp with tube phono.

"If you want advice based on actual experience, long RCA's works just fine. I used shielded coax, stranded center conductor for flexibility. They are 18 or 20 feet long and still in use connected to R and L subs as I have since went balanced to amp with different gear.

The system was dead quiet and as dynamic as shorter RCA's. Period. "

I can supply names of folks that heard this setup. Jay (agfrost) Doug (DKG999) Aaron (ALL212) to name three.

I've never had a problem with long runs of either. I think as long as you buy a halfway decent cable, it isn't going to matter much unless we are talking the extreme in distances. Most decent cables are pretty good at noise rejection these days, it's the cheap stuff that I'd worry about.