Super long speaker cables

I suggest you review this comprehensive article on Roger Russell's McIntosh history website. This article goes into great details and what McIntosh did to "test" wire to determine the facts. A matrix with speaker wire gauge and recommended max lengths is in this link; you'll have to wade through it to find it. Much interesting information.

Don't spend thousands on wire; let people that want to throw away money do that.

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

I just read the pages on Roger Russell's website.

I'm sure that he's a very nice man.

However, the data from 1983, and the testing methods used(with other "heavy" cables in the signal path between the relays and the speakers), and the wires being tested, and the very basic resistance being the only thing measured, is quite dated, very incomplete, and actually virtually useless.

We now know that many other factors come into play in cabling, with impedance, capacitance, shielding, geometries, dielectrics, and other factors being in the mix, which are ALL now known to have influence on the sonic performance in the audio range. All of these things are measurable, and have been measured and determined to have effect, and it is this mix of things in each cable brand(and some others perhaps not yet discovered or measureable) which will cause the sonics of different cables to be different.

I'm sure that he was trying to be helpful, and gave it a good shot for what was known at that time. But, time marches on, and just as people once thought that the heavens revolved around the earth, we now know otherwise.

For long speaker cabling, any wire will make sound come out of the speakers. How good you want the sound to be, will determine whether simple zip cord is sufficient, or if you want to use something that is more expensive(and possibly better). If you have reasonably good resolution in your system, different cables will sound different, and you need only to try some to hear this.

Since most commercial brands of speaker cables are quite expensive in long lengths, perhaps it would be a good idea to investigate some DIY cable recipes that have a good reputation, and you can make them yourself at lower cost.

The main conflict(IMO) about cables in general is typically not so much that they sound different(which they obviously do), but that in some consumers' opinions, they should not cost as much as they do. I'm sure that if all cables cost under $100, there would not be so much contention about the obvious performance differences. IMO, the contention is based around some people's recalcitrance to pay large sums of money for what they consider to be only "wire", which in their minds, should not cost much at all. And perhaps they are right in certain regards.

Even being a proponent of "boutique" wiring myself, I can see the need for keeping costs low when you are having to buy a very large amount of it. This is why I suggested the DIY route.

If you analyzed the field of medicine about 300 B.C. you would have a very low opinion of doctors, but now the medical profession is highly respected. With cables I'm sure that most of the more expensive offerings are snake oil, but that doesn't mean that there aren't more expensive cables with some legitimate benefits.

Here's another good source of information for anyone who's interested in accuracy rather than coloration from their cables:

http://www.pcavtech.com/techtalk/wire_size/index.htm

As for Twl's rather astounding rewriting of engineering history, there have been absolutely no major breakthroughs in scientific knowledge about cable performance at audio frequencies in the last two decades. Everything he mentions was well known and understood decades ago.

Pabelson, apparently it was not known by Mr. Russell.

I was attempting to not appear "heavy handed" in my post.

A couple of references like "now known", and "time marches on" hardly accounts for an "astounding re-write of engineering history". Perhaps I should have written, "not known by some people in audiophile circles".