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tINY · 1st October 2004

There could be a noticable difference if the length difference is a couple of feet with a tube amp and really tweeky speakers with low impedance regions. But. these are already bad set-ups in a lot of ways...

Typically, if you are using solid state amplifiers and reasonable speakers (in terms of minimum impedance), then 20 feet isn't going to matter with #16 AWG. The biggest effect is damping factor. The impedance of the wire is effecticvely added to the source impedance of the amp and the damping factor is lowered.

See

http://www.cardinalproaudio.com/main/speaker.htm
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

You'll read all sorts of claims on speaker wire, and you probably can hear the difference with esoteric amps and speakers. Not because they sound better. but because they have unusual charateristics like high-impedance output transformers and particularly low impedances in certain frequency bands of the speakers

-tINY

1st October 2004	#6
tINY Gear Guru Joined: Jul 2004 Location: Orygun Posts: 10,228	There could be a noticable difference if the length difference is a couple of feet with a tube amp and really tweeky speakers with low impedance regions. But. these are already bad set-ups in a lot of ways... Typically, if you are using solid state amplifiers and reasonable speakers (in terms of minimum impedance), then 20 feet isn't going to matter with #16 AWG. The biggest effect is damping factor. The impedance of the wire is effecticvely added to the source impedance of the amp and the damping factor is lowered. See http://www.cardinalproaudio.com/main/speaker.htm http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm You'll read all sorts of claims on speaker wire, and you probably can hear the difference with esoteric amps and speakers. Not because they sound better. but because they have unusual charateristics like high-impedance output transformers and particularly low impedances in certain frequency bands of the speakers -tINY