I’ve had an issue with my Tellurium Q speaker cables, where a Banana plug has simply snapped/sheared off. I won’t go into this now as it is mentioned on one of my other posts (Trying to determine what’s broken)
Ever since I got into serious Hi-Fi, I have been told that speaker lengths must be the same. So the the left speaker can’t have 3.5 meters, while the right speaker has 6 meters.
I have just spoken to Geoff Merrigan, the MD of Tellurium Q. I explained my issue, and he suggested that all eight connections should be re terminated, as the speaker cables were ten years old. Fair enough.
We then got into the conversation about cable lengths…Cut a long story short, he told me that it was absolutely fine to have speaker cables at different lengths, and the idea that speaker cables must be equal lengths, is a myth.
We all know how expensive cables can be, so is it really necessary to have excess speaker cable ‘crackerjacked’ and hidden away?
It’s nothing to do with the speed of light. It’s that the capacitance and self-induction of the two cables should be the same as they form part of the stability network of the Naim power amplifier. Making them the same length is the easy way to make them the same capacitance and inductance.
At speed of electricity flow the time delay between one side at 3.5 and one at 6m will be of no consequence. In fact not having an extra length curled up under your rack might even be better.
As long as the difference isn’t ridiculous it’ll be fine, 10m one side, 1m the other. That can present differing loads to each channel. The more realistic answer is if it’s good cable or expensive is that if one decides to change or sell it may be hard to find a buyer.
My speaker cable lengths are, or were, 4 meters. I had a bit of a joke with the MD, suggesting that if my cables are re terminated, they’ll be slightly shorter than 4 meters. It was that which prompted me to ask him about cable lengths.
many years ago I had a hifi system with the amplifier to one side, and I trimmed the speaker cable so that there was just enough to reach each speaker - which meant one was about twice as long as the other. It sounded by wrong (this was back in about 1975 or so). I replaced the wires with equal lengths, and it was fine. I have no idea why it should make any difference, and I’m pretty sure there were no other confounding factors, so I think that in that case that amplifier (non-Naim, IIRC) it did make a very obvious difference.
