# Speaker cable <> filter?



## sambonee (Dec 20, 2007)

I heard that long speaker cables are good as they filter out unwanted sounds. Well I can say that I am happy with the difference it makes. 

Anyone else have any experience. ??


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## Guitar101 (Jan 19, 2011)

Personally, I can't understand how the wire could determine which sounds are unwanted. Here's some interesting reading about speaker wire.

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


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## sambonee (Dec 20, 2007)

This guy's article is very precise. Ok. Well I'm gonna do an ear test. He made sense though. I wondering there's any resewrch about my claim too. An experienced player told me about the "filtering" of longer wire.


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## WCGill (Mar 27, 2009)

Yup, great article, been awhile since I read it so a reread was in order. When you do your ear test, try and have someone help you so that you don't know which wire you're listening to.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

This will be an interesting thread.


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## dtsaudio (Apr 15, 2009)

Interesting, if not a bit long winded. Most of the article is pretty accurate, but there are holes. One hole is that he does not mention inductance at all. This can have at least as much effect on amp/speaker performance as capacitance can. He puts far too much emphasis on resistance and not impedance. He also doesn't name which amplifiers or which type of amplifiers he uses (tube or solid state). There can be large differences between these types. 
And I'm sorry but that chart at the beginning. Nobody would use 22ga wire 12ft long.


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## GTmaker (Apr 24, 2006)

let me get this straight...

Some will claim that you can hear the difference in tone/sound based on the speaker cable construction. !!!!!

THOSE GUYS ARE NUTS and you can tell them I told you so.

G.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Let's get this straight. The article is NOT about the 2 feet between your amp head and your cab. It is about the considerably more feet between your stereo power amp and your P.A. speakers or home stereo speakers.

I'm not pooh-poohing it. I'm saying it's about something different than what matters to guitar players.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

Using a long speaker cable to filter/distort the signal may lead to an interesting effect the same as a dead battery in a pedal may lead to one. But it isn't something I would do by choice or consistently rely on. YMMV.


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## parkhead (Aug 14, 2009)

this stuff is a waste of time... he is talking about exotic multi stranded speaker cables for hi fi nuters
and while the academics are interesting and the science is real the only take aways you need are

the longer and thinner your PA speaker cable and the lower the impedance the greater the power loss ..
so for PA use shorter and ticker cables or you will waste substantial amounts of power 

for guitar amps some folks use longer thinner speaker cables which supposedly jangle more
thicker shorter wire for tighter bass and dynamics

however for the average person you probably cant hear this unless you make a 100 foot
speaker cable out of the thinnest crappy wire you can fine and compare it to
a short decent cable

I have already spent as much time typing as this topic is worth you are better off
comparing battery brands in fuzz pedals and this is also a waste of time
after the initial surprise of hearing a difference

wow I seem grumpy today !

p


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