Just read this bit from this website http://www.sge-inc.com/expert.htm. The
writer states that a 10-foot distance difference in speaker wiring will make
a sound quality difference, but then suggests that the extra unused length
on one side be coiled up. Wouldn't this act like an inductor limiting higher
frequencies and causing the user a new headache? :-) Or now that the wire is
coiled up on itself, he might get phase-shift interference, from the later
waveform in the top of the coil interacting with the earlier waveform in the
bottom of the coil.

Just wonderin' what you all think of this guy's advice.

By my calculations, assuming the speed of electricity to be only *one tenth*
that of light to be conservative, this 10 foot difference would represent a
1 microsecond delay to one speaker. Not 1 millisecond, 1 _micro_second. HA!

-Bill

-------------------Begin Excerpt-------------------

Mr. Expert,

I have a really good receiver and decent speakers, but they sound terrible!
I have heard that the shape of the room has a lot to do with the way a
stereo sounds. The highs are real nice and clear, but the bass seems muddy
and lacks definition. I have checked the phasing of the speakers (red is
connected to red and black to black on both of them) and that is OK. What is
wrong?"

-- name withheld

After a couple of e-mails back and forth, our correspondent informed me that
he is in a very long, thin room (30 feet by 10 feet). He has the speakers
along one of the 10 foot walls. His major listening area is about 10 feet
from the speakers (good placement, an equilateral triangle). His receiver is
on one of the side walls so that one speaker is 12 feet from the near
speaker and 22 feet from the far speaker. Now comes the big question -- how
many feet and what kind (gauge) of speaker wire do you have going to each
speaker?

This is where his problem lies. He had about 15 feet going to the near
speaker and 25 to the far. In a stereo installation, the speaker wires must
be the same length to each speaker. The bass signal is usually mixed equally
in each speaker and the difference in length of wire could cause a small
phase differential between the woofers! I advised him to get a new 25 foot
long piece of the same wire he was using (a good 16 gauge high quality
speaker wire) and to use it to connect the near speaker, coiling up the
excess in a place where it was not too unsightly. He called me on the phone
to thank me. The improvement was so dramatic (in his case) that he went out
and bought 10 new CDs!

--------------------End Excerpt--------------------