Speaker wire - equal length or shortest?

Not everyone agrees about different lengths. Of course, the wires to the speakers should be as short as possible, but you won't be able to tell the difference between different lengths to the speakers unless the disparity is really big and you have very sensitive hearing (maybe). The only reason(s) different lengths would sound different have to do with resistance capacitance and inductance if those things have an audible effect (I dont want to discuss this, but believe on a completely non-scientifc basis that they do). The signal travels too fast to make an audible difference in arrival time.

I use different lengths in 2 fairly revealing systems (ratio of 1.5 to 1)and am pretty sensitive to differences in cables and have no problems at all.

But, if you are uncomfortable with this, and with 70 feet of wire I hope you're not using something really expensive or else have ore money than you know what to do with, use equal lengths. Why not?

Assuming you use a low-resistance (think thick) speaker cable, you can get away with different lengths. An extra 15 feet of high-resistance cable could result in some FR imbalance between channels. But given that one of your runs is 35 feet, you should be using a low-resistance cable anyway.

Sumiko claims that their OCOS cables can be run with unequal lengths with no sonic consequences.

I have heard a demonstration of the OCOS which seemed to support the claim. But you need to like the sound of the OCOS. If you like it you will call it fast. If you don't like it you will call it lean and perhaps a tad metallic. I have no doubt that it would sound great to most ears in the right system, but also awfully thin and bright to most ears in the wrong system. Just beware it is not a middle of the road type cable - definitely tipped in one particular direction.

Paulwp - good on ya sport! For being a dissenting voice - I can respect that. I have also heard systems (with Kimber 8TC as it happens) that had unequal long lengths and I did not find it at all irksome. So Albert got it right - same lengths does matter, so that is what you should do if you want optimum performance, but mileage will vary depending.

So you need to balance risk and return. There is a risk you will be unhappy with the unequal lengths, and how much would you have saved, the distance between your speakers cannot be that great can it?

I got really close to a RHUBARB for a moment, but do not want to devalue it right now.

Use equal lengths absolutely. Also realize that for a run that long you are better off with a networked design cable such as MIT or Transparent. Group delay is a significant degradation factor in any cable, but especialy in longer runs of interconnect or speaker cable. Only networked designs are compensated to achieve corrections for the time distortions encountered.