Speaker Cable Length
Posted by: Christopher on 02 November 2001
Any advice appreciated. 
However, the optimal length is 5 metres, so don't get too happy with that stanley knife!
It's always a nice day for it 
Have a good one!
Steve.
It's good to get back to normal.
I used to run with the bare minnimum length, but stepped up to 5M and found that this improved some of the treble harshness. Make sure to use Naim plugs at the end aswell. This has significant impact.
As long as the excess is short, you can loosely curl it. I have found on sound deterioration from doing this to be minimal. Many small loops, is a different issue.
Regards, David
A recent redecorating of our living room dictated that I went from 3.5m per side, to 8m, and I noticed an improvement in sound beyond what the usual cleaning/remaking of connections brings about. The soldering was the same in both cases, using Naim plugs.
You could always loosely coil the excess A5 into oval shapes (or zig zag it) under nearby furniture. Avoid small, even, tight circles as they are said to act as inductors, and adversely affect the cables performance. My gear is half way round the room to the one side of the speakers, so I merely extended the closer speakers cable past the speaker and then doubled back to it, to avoid to whole looping thing.
Craig
Whoops, beaten to the Post Now button by David!
Alex
If you need more than 10m I envy the amount of space you have!
Regards, David
quote:
Originally posted by Craig Best:
I went from 3.5m per side, to 8m, and I noticed an improvement in sound beyond what the usual cleaning/remaking of connections brings about.
How old were your old cables?
Remember that Naim reformulated A5 a while ago (change of supplier).
Are you sure you weren't comparing old-style to new-style?
cheers, Martin
If this were not the case then you could simply coil short runs of NACA5 to make them appear to the amp to be longer runs (with lower capacitance too). The shape of your speaker cable doesn't matter from an inductance point of view. It matter in other ways such as mechanical stress.
Understandably, these sort of errors arise a lot and its easy to fall into the trap of misinterpreting what's going on. In this case, Mr X sees an inductor one day and notices it is a coiled wire. He then, incorrectly, concludes that all coils are inductive. Mrs X then further compounds the error when she notices that a figure of eight is two coils of opposite direction and then concludes, incorrectly, that having two coils of opposite direction cancels the inductance out.
In fact it doesn't. A single wire wound in a figure of eight is just two inductors. In fact it is a similar configuration to coils in a toroidal transformer. It will have a *different* inductance to a single coil, not *no* inductance.
[This message was edited by bam on FRIDAY 02 November 2001 at 23:53.]
Judd
not so long ago I started a poll like that and it did not bring absolutely any reliable result. Even Naim Audio did not want to describe for us the optimum length, the Pauls kept repeating that any length between 5m and 10m is acceptable.
That time I had CD3/32.5 with sbls and found the 5m length too harsh so I mounted 2x5m together (not too hygienic you bet). Now having CDS1/72 I see no reason for any change, the 10m sounds more relaxed and in my listening attitude (opera, symphonics, classical jazz) that’s what matters.
My room is not large and the enorm length of cable is curled up in a way you can see sometime in the street when cable will be layed down – not the favourite spectacle in the eyes of the Lady of My Home.
graphoman
Don't magnetic fields have a directional aspect?
Martin,
Both runs were from the same reel. Both soldered, by me, using the same spool. Not very scientific, I know, but I did need longer runs, and it did sound better prior to rearranging the room.
Just my experience.
Craig
I believe you!
The "standard" length is 10m.
Minumum is 3.5m, max is 20m. I'm not surprised that something closer to 10m was better.
I have 6x 8m runs in my system, and could really do with 10m instead to make my room layout easier. Think on that!
cheers, Martin
Yes. The trick is to ensure the opposing field vectors cancel out rather than add. In a figure of eight the fields are in opposite directions at the centres of each loop, but a circular field is generated that runs perpendicular to the loops and through and around each loop - like the taurus of a transformer. This isn't what is desired.
But in any case, with speaker cable the fact that each loop contains cancelling fields makes the matter mute.
It sounded fine to me!
OK,it's not the Naca5,but it comes pretty close,imho.
Greetings,
Alco
quote:
Originally posted by Alco:
This afternoon I connected my old 2 x _2,5_ meter Transparent "Wave" ls-cable.
Alco,
the length is irrelevant if it's not Naim cable.
Check for the amp running hotter, too.
cheers, Martin