Jim (Jea48), thanks for providing the Nordost quote and link. I’d have to say that those recommendations don’t say anything positive about their credibility as a cable manufacturer, as far as I am concerned. In addition to the lack of supporting rationale, the recommendations for analog interconnects, tonearm cables, and speaker cables are one size fits all recommendations that make no sense IMO.
The degree of virtually all explainable effects of line-level analog interconnects and speaker cables (including those whose audible significance is debatable or doubtful) is directly proportional to length. That would include the effects of resistance, inductance, capacitance, skin effect, proximity effect, dielectric absorption, and propagation delay, among several others that could be cited. Therefore if the goal is for those types of cables to behave in as neutral and uncolored a manner as possible, the shorter they are the better. In fact an advantage of monoblock power amps that is often cited is that they make the use of very short speaker cables practicable, thereby minimizing their effects.
The only effects of line-level analog interconnects and speaker cables I can think of that would not be directly proportional to length would be antenna effects, that could conceivably result under some circumstances in audibly significant pickup or radiation of RFI/EMI. But even in that case it would seem expectable that the shorter the cable is the better.
And when it comes to tonearm cables, their one size fits all recommendation ignores differences between moving magnet cartridges (for which the sum of cable capacitance, phono stage input capacitance, and tonearm wiring capacitance should conform to the recommendation of the manufacturer of the particular cartridge), and low output moving coil cartridges (for which minimization of capacitance is generally desirable, but the significance of which is highly dependent on the particular phono stage and the particular cartridge).
I’ll give them some credit, though, for the 1.5 meter digital cable recommendation, which as you are aware has been well explained technically, and well documented anecdotally. Although even that recommendation will in many cases not be optimal (that possibility also having been well documented anecdotally). 1.5 meters should be thought of as having the best odds of being optimal (unless a very short length is practicable, such as 6 or 8 inches), but there will be a significant number of cases in which 1 meter or some other length will prove to be a better choice, as the optimal length depends on many unknown and unpredictable component and cable dependent variables. The risetimes and falltimes of the signal provided by the component which drives the cable being one very significant variable, that is almost always unspecified and unknown. Numerous other variables that affect what length will be optimal could also be cited.
Regards,
-- Al
