Which is the optimal length of speaker wires?

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magnuska
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K400 length with Klångedang T1

Post by magnuska »

Hi Fredrik,

I haven`t seen this thread (or acually read it) until now. As I have the first sold Klångedang we didn`t focus so much on cable lenght and I do appreciate that you have taken time to investigate this. When I look at my K400 between speaker and filter I found them to be around 1,8-1,9 meters only. I think I choose a shorter length due to short distance for more of a estetic reason. So now I begin to think that I have missed a lot of K1 potential by having to short runs!?
I also a use another brand Tellurium black 1m between filter and amp mainly because one could buy this set readyterminated.

What do you say about all this? Would a I gain much in SQ by choosing a say 2,4 m lenght or are we talking relative small differences here?

I have talked to Anders who also had done similar test and he had a broader interval of lenghts that would work fine, readable on FAQ site on Klångedang page.At the time he referred to possible different settings on the filter to different cable lenghts what i can recall.

Would I also benefit from using a shorter lenght between filter and amp and also preferable use the same K400, meaning not mixing brands?

Even though I find that it sounds real good now I anyway would like to have this area optmized too of course.

Thanks for any input or suggestions. It would also be interesting to hear from other K1 owners how you have sold the cabling. Lenghts and brands etc.

Regards Magnus
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Post by lejonklou »

Hi Magnus!

As I have written previously in this thread, the differences are not small. And too short is not good at all, while too long is acceptable.

After having done some more experiments in this area (trying to adapt circuits to a suboptimal lengths of wire), my conclusion is that every cable appears to have an optimal length in itself, and in addition, some circuits can to some degree be optimised for a certain length of cable. This means that if you are using a length of cable that is not optimal, you will 1) never reach the full potential of the system, and 2) risk making bad compensations in the circuit when attempting to optimise performance.

I expect Anders to be very careful and methodical in his development of the fantastic T1 (I assume that by "K1", you mean Kångedang T1). It's interesting to note, however, that despite him not using 2.48 m lenths of K400, I have confirmed that for both the old 1.x versions and the 2.01 version, the optimal length of K200 from amplifier to filter is "very short" (I use 0.4 m) and from filter to T1 it's 2.48 m. Clearly in this case, Anders has not been able to tune his speaker to suit the longer runs of K200/400 he's been using. And you know how detailed his tuning is!

Conclusion: The optimal length of K200/400 has a very strong quality "in itself", not easily compensated for.
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Post by magnuska »

Thanks for your answer- very much appreciate it. Sorry T1 was refered to Klångedang T1 also stated in the subject line.

If I understand you correctly, are you then suggesting that Anders should consider using optimal lengths found by you in order to maximise his development of the speaker?

About the short one (0,4m) cable, is it important that also this one is a Linn K200?

Magnus
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Post by lejonklou »

magnuska wrote:If I understand you correctly, are you then suggesting that Anders should consider using optimal lengths found by you in order to maximise his development of the speaker?
That's up to him. But I doubt it matters much. I have tested lengths with single drive units and regardless of whether it's a woofer or a tweeter, the optimal length was the same. So: It appears to be a strong quality in itself.
About the short one (0,4m) cable, is it important that also this one is a Linn K200?
Yes.

I have a long term cable project, in which I try interesting new cables that I come across. The goal is to one day be able to offer something extraordinary. I have found that it's easy to make comparisons with the short run from power amp to T1 filter. The differences become very clear.
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Post by magnuska »

Hm thanks I will see If I can trade in my existing cable for an additonal longer one and maybe also change the short one.

Will report later how it goes.

Magnus
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Post by ThomasOK »

I took a longtime to test out this optimum length for K400/K200 cables. There are two reasons for this. 1) My main system uses active ATC speakers with the amps and crossovers built in, like Akubariks, so there is no place to plug in speaker cables. 2) Since it seemed like 2.48m was the likely correct length rather than the proven one I thought I'd wait for someone else to determine it for sure. (As much as I have going on I have to take the occasional opportunity to be lazy. ;-)

However, last week I had to make up a number of Linn cables (seems like I've become the cable guy with orders coming in from California and Illinois, on top of my local customers). As I was making K400s (and also some K20s) with Linn Knekt bananas I brought in my own soldering station (the same as Fredriks) so I could get the temperature exact and I also brought in my Lejonklou solder. Since I was setting up to make these cables it seemed a good time to make some 2.48m K200 for myself to see how it works. In addition I had a nice long piece of K400 a customer gave me after he converted to single wire speakers in exchange for re-terminating the other length into two K200s. It was long enough for me to make two pair of 2.48m K200 plus a little.

So I decided to experiment and I made one pair of 2.48m and one pair of 2.47m. In inches this is less than .4" difference. All soldered at the correct temperature with Lejonklou solder and Knekt bananas. The pair of K400s I was making were 7m for the customer in Illinois as he is running them into the basement and back up.

With all three sets complete it was time for a comparison. This was actually not done with a Linn system as I didn't have one convenient where I could use this length of cable. But we had a setup using Simaudio Moon CD player (excuse me, DAC/Transport as we are supposed to call them) and a Moon Integrated amp running into Dynaudio speakers. I connected one side of the 7m K400s and compared to the 2.48m K200s. The difference was immediately obvious. While I would have said the 7m K400s sounded good, when compared to the 2.48m K200 they sounded pretty flat and sluggish. It just seemed like they were holding the music back and the quality of the notes was less obvious and enjoyable. The 2.48m brought everything to life and really boogied. Music was fun and the musicians sounded like they were doing a better job of playing and were more together. So then I swapped in the 2.47m and, surprise, it was immediately obvious it was not as good. It was still a lot more musical than the 7m but compared to the 2.48m the bass sounded muffled and ill-defined. The midrange as well wasn't as tuneful or well-timed. I didn't notice much difference in the highs but I wasn't really breaking down the frequency ranges while listening - I was just listening to the music and noticing what struck me as different.

Anyway, I was surprised how much difference that slight change in length makes and I really like the way the 2.48m sounds. Just for the fun of it I also compared those two for another guy who works here. (He is not at all a Tune method guy.) He heard an immediate difference but mostly commented on the imaging differences between the two. His big surprise was just that he could actually hear that much difference between two otherwise identical cables that were only about .4 inches in length different. So once again congratulations to Fredrik for doing this research. 2.48m certainly appears to be the way to go.

While I was making up these cables, however, something else came to light I felt should be discussed here. Apparently there is a NEW K400 cable. The new cables I made up from the latest roll I got from Linn a number of months ago has a different dielectric than the older one I used to make up my test cables. The new dielectric is harder than the old one and has a more hard plastic feel rather than a soft rubbery one - more like teflon, although I don't know what the material is. It is enough of a difference that it makes the wire feel substantially stiffer even though the actual copper conductors, with a quick observation, appear to be the same. I have taken a photo of the two side by side which is shown below:

Image

The older cable is on the left with the white heat shrink and the new cable is on the right with the red heat shrink. I have to say that the new dielectric is much easier to strip without accidentally nicking the individual wires. But the theory certainly seems to be that different dielectrics sound different so I wondered if anybody had noticed this and tested the two cables for musical quality. I don't have any more of the roll of K400 left but a new one is on the way from Linn. I will be making up a pair of 2.48m K200 for the California customer but, of course, they will be new cable whereas my test 2.48ms are cable that has been used for several years so only the bananas and solder haven't been burned-in/aged. Any thoughts?
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Post by donuk »

Interesting and amazing research Thomas - thank you for your dedication. Reading this thread a couple of months ago I decided to reduce the length of my K200 to 2.48m. Partly out of curiosity, and partly to get rid of a couple of coils of cable on the carpet from my previously 6 m length: so at least it would look neater.

I was found the sound much improved. I have not compared the with other lengths, and indeed the perceived improvement could be explained simply in terms of resistance and inductance &c.

I used to have some K400 in the long ago, and also thought that my more recent purchase was a bit different and easier to flex.

Thomas - I think I have mentioned it elsewhere, but do get some cheap garden secateurs - I steal my wife's - and try using this to spit the cable. Get the sort where you have one sharp blade cutting onto one blunt, 4mm blade. Slide the blunt blade down the groove in the cable as you cut. You will have fingers at the end of the day and will not cut into the conductors.

Good morning from sunny downtown York
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Post by lejonklou »

Thanks for the report, Thomas!

That ONE CM difference in length resulting in a performance difference must seem silly to a lot of readers - even on this forum! But once one starts experimenting, it becomes obvious that performance around the optimal length is like a peak. So even miniscule differences become easy to tell apart.

If we move away from that peak and experiment around 7 m (the long length that Thomas made), it will probably become impossible to tell 1 cm and perhaps even 10 cm apart.

Regardless, I must also point out that there are tiny variations between ALL soldered joints. Even if you make them exactly the same way and at the same time. So, to be absolutely sure of the effect of a very small length difference, I don't think it's enough to compare just once.

Regarding the new and old K400, I do recognise the difference in appearance: The new one has less red or white colour on the non-black conductors. But I haven't noticed any difference in stiffness or whether it's easier to strip? Maybe you are correct that the new one is a little stiffer.

Looking around at my collection of K200 cables, it seems to me that the new one has been around for quite some time. I have probably made all my final length comparisons (between 2 and 3 m) using the new K400. Right now I can only find four cables of the old model. One is an old reference pair I made around 8 years ago (don't know exactly when because back then I didn't mark everything with date and all details). This was after I had found the best solder wire, but in terms of temperature I was about 5 degrees too high (I had not yet evaluated the last degrees). This particular cable happened to be 2.37 cm long and when I made the final length evaluations, I compared this one as well to see whether its relatively high age would have an influence on performance. Its performance turned out to be close to a three month old 2.40 m pair. So my conclusion was: Around 8 years is not a problem!

Now I think we can also draw another conclusion: The new and old K400 are likely to perform very similar. Otherwise that old cable would have stood out in the comparison.
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Post by ThomasOK »

lejonklou wrote: Regardless, I must also point out that there are tiny variations between ALL soldered joints. Even if you make them exactly the same way and at the same time. So, to be absolutely sure of the effect of a very small length difference, I don't think it's enough to compare just once.
I have to say this is pure Fredrik. I post my findings which corroborate his research and instead of basking in the glow of commendation he points out the possible limitations in my methodology! ;-) Know any other designer so humble and exacting as to do that?

I have to say that the likelihood of me finding time to solder up 3 pairs each of 2.47m and 2.48m in order to verify that I should throw away the shorter versions is highly unlikely but I'd be glad to read the research of anyone who does. :-) Meantime I will use the 2.48m set I made up as my reference until something better comes along.
lejonklou wrote: Regarding the new and old K400, I do recognise the difference in appearance: The new one has less red or white colour on the non-black conductors. But I haven't noticed any difference in stiffness or whether it's easier to strip? Maybe you are correct that the new one is a little stiffer.

Looking around at my collection of K200 cables, it seems to me that the new one has been around for quite some time. I have probably made all my final length comparisons (between 2 and 3 m) using the new K400. Right now I can only find four cables of the old model. One is an old reference pair I made around 8 years ago (don't know exactly when because back then I didn't mark everything with date and all details). This was after I had found the best solder wire, but in terms of temperature I was about 5 degrees too high (I had not yet evaluated the last degrees). This particular cable happened to be 2.37 cm long and when I made the final length evaluations, I compared this one as well to see whether its relatively high age would have an influence on performance. Its performance turned out to be close to a three month old 2.40 m pair. So my conclusion was: Around 8 years is not a problem!

Now I think we can also draw another conclusion: The new and old K400 are likely to perform very similar. Otherwise that old cable would have stood out in the comparison.
Yes, you can see in the photo that the older wire has bigger and brighter colored stripes. The new wire has two stripes instead of one but they are on the same side. I think it is quite likely it changed a while ago and I just didn't notice it. It was since I was working on the two side by side that I noticed the difference. And it was the substantially different hardness of insulation that really brought it to my attention. In this I am speaking of the insulation of the individual conductors, not the outer insulation over the whole cable. That seems to remain the same and is, as always, a bear to strip. Glad to hear it is likely to perform similarly.

We just received another roll of K400 and it appears to be the same as the last one. As I will be making a 2.48m set of them I might have a chance to see if I hear any difference. Again, there would be the limitation of fresh cable vs. one that is a few years old.
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Post by lejonklou »

ThomasOK wrote:I have to say that the likelihood of me finding time to solder up 3 pairs each of 2.47m and 2.48m in order to verify that I should throw away the shorter versions is highly unlikely but I'd be glad to read the research of anyone who does. :-) Meantime I will use the 2.48m set I made up as my reference until something better comes along.
No offence intended when I wrote that once is not enough to be certain! Your report is most welcome and to further confirm it, Erik has just compared one 2.46 m pair with a 2.50 m pair that I made for him (both at the same time) late last year.

Apparently, they are clearly different and 2.50 is slightly better than 2.46. I am now shipping him my 2.48 m pair (about as old as his two pairs, all three well run in and made the exact same way) to see how it compares to 2.50 m.
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Post by ThomasOK »

lejonklou wrote:
ThomasOK wrote:I have to say that the likelihood of me finding time to solder up 3 pairs each of 2.47m and 2.48m in order to verify that I should throw away the shorter versions is highly unlikely but I'd be glad to read the research of anyone who does. :-) Meantime I will use the 2.48m set I made up as my reference until something better comes along.
No offence intended when I wrote that once is not enough to be certain! Your report is most welcome and to further confirm it, Erik has just compared one 2.46 m pair with a 2.50 m pair that I made for him (both at the same time) late last year.

Apparently, they are clearly different and 2.50 is slightly better than 2.46. I am now shipping him my 2.48 m pair (about as old as his two pairs, all three well run in and made the exact same way) to see how it compares to 2.50 m.
No offense taken. I was more commenting on the modesty your exactness forces on you.

However, a little more research has brought some additional information, if not a final conclusion. I had a customer call from Los Angeles, CA to have me make up about a 3 meter pair of K400s as he heard I was "the man to make them". He then asked if there was a preferred length and I told him about the research here. So he ordered a 2.48m pair of K400 to run from an AK4200 to a pair of passive two-way ATCs. I made them up last week off a fresh spool of K400 along with another set of K200 from the same wire. All cables were made using Knekt bananas, Lejonklou solder and a temperature of 677°F (the most musical temp from my iron which is the same model as Fredriks').

Today I had to ship them out so I did a little listening first. I compared both sides of one of the K400s with the left and right K200s playing on one speaker only. Then I brought in the K200s I had made out of the older K400 cable in 2.48m and 2.47m lengths. The findings were interesting. First off I felt that all the latest 2.48m K400 and K200 cables sounded very close although one of the new K200s did sound a touch more musical than the other K200 or either side of the K400 so there was some evidence of a small difference due to ? - soldering?, difference in Knekts?, difference in K400? - hard to say. The difference was quite small but appears to be repeatable. Then I tried the older K200s mentioned above. The older 2.48m K200 was immediately shown to be more musical with better flow and more natural sounding harmonics. I can't attribute this to a cable difference, however, as the K400 wire used to make this has had several years run-in in a Hi-Fi system - only the Knekts and soldering is new. Whereas the new K200 and K400 were both from new cable off the roll so burn-in is highly likely to be a big factor in the difference. That said, even with any advantage of burn in the 2.47m K200 of the older cable was the least musical of all of them. As reported before the most noticeable difference was in the bass where it appeared sluggish and ill defined compared to any of the other cables. It was also a touch less tuneful in the mids and highs but this was much closer to the others. So although the old 2.48m K200 was definitely the most musical of the cables the older 2.47m K200 was also the least musical of the cables and definitely still behind the new, non-burned-in cables. The characteristic differences between the 2.47m and 2.48m cables remained consistent regardless of which 2.48m cable I used - only the amount of difference changed depending on the musical quality of the particular 2.48m cable.

Now I did not use multiple 2.47m K200s so there is still room for error. However, the difference between the soldering of all the 2.48m cables I made was less than the difference to the 2.47m and also a bit different in nature. And the 2.47m should have had some advantage from the cable itself having years of burn-in but it still came in behind. This leads me to believe that it is even a stronger case for the musical advantage of the 2.48m length.

Now I need to burn-in the newer 2.48m K200s (and also the older ones to burn-in and age the solder connections and Knekts) so I can see if there appears to be any real difference between the new and old dielectrics.
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Optimal length of speaker wires

Post by Pedro »

Is there a correlation between the optimal length of speaker wires and the length of the power cable?

I noticed that the length of the current Linn standard power cable in Europe is 2.48 cm (Longwell, measured from plug to plug). I suppose that Thomas and Frederik (who made the tests) use these cables or comparable cables of the same length. (Even though I know that the previous 'Power One' cables from Frederik were shorter.)

Maybe the balanced length has influence on the load of the amplifier. So if the electronic circuits and power supplies are optimised with 2,48 cm long power cables, you end up with 2,48 cm long speaker wires?
(From an amateurish point of view).
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Re: Optimal length of speaker wires

Post by lejonklou »

Pedro wrote:Is there a correlation between the optimal length of speaker wires and the length of the power cable?
No, nothing indicates a correlation between these two.

The best power cord I currently supply (on my small units such as Gaio and Slipsik) is a UK version from Volex. It's 3 m long and making it shorter makes it perform worse. I don't know whether it could sound even better if it was longer than 3 m, but it does become quite impractical with such long cords, so I'm not in a hurry to find out. Add to that the risk that people (unaware of it being a quality issue) cut them down, which I have seen a few times. A perhaps convenient length of 0.2 m on a Slipsik 5 with a screw on plug makes it perform restless and harsh. Much bigger difference than one expects!

When I tried different cable constructions of power cords a while back, each type appeared to have it's own optimal length. I suspect the same thing applies to different speaker cables (I have so far only evaluated the length of K400).
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Post by lejonklou »

ThomasOK wrote:Now I did not use multiple 2.47m K200s so there is still room for error. However, the difference between the soldering of all the 2.48m cables I made was less than the difference to the 2.47m and also a bit different in nature. And the 2.47m should have had some advantage from the cable itself having years of burn-in but it still came in behind. This leads me to believe that it is even a stronger case for the musical advantage of the 2.48m length.
Ok!

Erik has now compared the two pairs of 2.50 m that I made for him with the 2.48 m I shipped together with the Sagatun proto preamp. He says it was very easy to tell them apart and that 2.48 sounded "just right" while 2.50 felt a bit sloppy.

I'm now sure that exactly 2.48 m is the optimal length for Linn K200/K400/K600. It's been confirmed repeatedly against other lengths (down to +-1 cm) with both Linn Knekt and Deltron 550 bananas soldered to both ends. And with a bunch of different amplifiers and loudspeakers.

The length 2.48 m is the length of the cable itself, when you cut it, before connectors are fitted.
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Post by ThomasOK »

lejonklou wrote: I'm now sure that exactly 2.48 m is the optimal length for Linn K200/K400/K600. It's been confirmed repeatedly against other lengths (down to +-1 cm) with both Linn Knekt and Deltron 550 bananas soldered to both ends. And with a bunch of different amplifiers and loudspeakers.

The length 2.48 m is the length of the cable itself, when you cut it, before connectors are fitted.
This is the way I measured it as well.
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Post by Music Lover »

got my cables from Fredrik and they are great, despite them being 1-2cm too long (currently using Speakon)
The extra 1-2cm is needed to be able to cut the cable and solder bananas...
It's all about musical understanding!
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Post by stefan »

Music Lover wrote:got my cables from Fredrik and they are great, despite them being 1-2cm too long (currently using Speakon)
The extra 1-2cm is needed to be able to cut the cable and solder bananas...
So did I, ordered 2,50 K200 to be able to cut and solder bananas (you never know). Fredrik asked what Speakon connectors I wanted. What do I know? Sent a mail to Linn but couldn't wait for that reply. Ended up with NL4FC. Later came Linns reply with with a recommendation of NL4FX.

The cables are likely great but the KCT and the cables arrived the very same day. Until then I used 4200D and K600. No way to compare the amps with the same cables or the cables with the same amps.
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Post by Charlie1 »

Just a quick post to say thanks to Fredrik for the 2.48m cables. They are definitely more musical than my previous 2.4m ones. Themselves more musical than the previous 2.3m pair. Mine are fitted with Linn Knekt connectors.
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Post by k_numigl »

* Do not go shorter than 2.4 m, as your system will sound restless.

True in my installation, too. This means 1.8 m compared to 2.51 m on
A242, which is of course a very rough excercise in contrast to your fine
tuning. I'm going to order 4x 2.48 m tomorrow to have 5 channels of 2.48 m
for each speaker. I couldn't get rid of a certain roughness or as you
name it restlessness (speaker placement, 3k torque, etc - nothing helped),
so I thought the speaker wasn't any better. Wrong. Thanks for advice!
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Post by rowlandhills »

I was meaning to ask...

I may have missed this earlier in the thread, but is 2.48m the length of the K400 before stripping and terminating, or the length from the tip of one banana plug to the other banana plug?

If it's the former, and the cable is already terminated, how can we check the length?
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Post by ThomasOK »

rowlandhills wrote:I was meaning to ask...

I may have missed this earlier in the thread, but is 2.48m the length of the K400 before stripping and terminating, or the length from the tip of one banana plug to the other banana plug?

If it's the former, and the cable is already terminated, how can we check the length?
It is the length of the cable itself before it is stripped and terminated.

You would need to know how much cable fits inside the Knekt banana. Then you could add that times two to the length of the cable from babana to banana (without the jackets). I am not at work today so I can't tell you what that measurement is.
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Post by rowlandhills »

Thanks Thomas!
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Post by k_numigl »

Fredrik, can you comment on the bananas used for these tests? Have all tests been made with brand new bananas, or, as the biggest contrast, have the same bananas been used for all tests, or something inbetween? Is it OK to reuse bananas for test purposes? (Proper desoldering considered.)
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Post by fatjulio »

So if I shortened my speaker cable to 2.48m and got longer interconnects to the power amps, should the interconnects all be the same length? I guess so to have the same character.
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Post by lejonklou »

k_numigl: Sorry for the late reply! I have used Deltron 550 (the banana that Linn supplied from early days until they made Knekt and Naim supplied until they made their own double version of the 550, with a beefier wire-side) and the optimal length results seemed identical to when using Knekt. I should point out that I did not use any 550's on the last decimetres of the tuning, so I can't rule out a possibility of the connector affecting the optimal lenght. As I found the aluminium Linn Knekts superior in sound quality, I used them exclusively during the last months (=the last decimetre).

Fatjulio: I am not sure yet about optimal analogue interconnect length. Right now it seems obvious that they are much less sensitive than loudspeaker cables (both practically and theoretically - there is no low impedance to worry about). More than 5 metres sounds great, which is not the case with speaker wires, but which length is optimal? I don't know yet.
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