legacy product speaker wire question

[khingila]

i recently moved, and the configuration of my new living room makes it desirable that i have speaker wires about 16 feet in length between the paraglow 2 and parabee 2 and straight 8 on one of the channels of my bi-amped system. is that too great a distance to be feasible, and, if not, what is the wire gauge necessary to connect effectively?  thanks for any assistance anyone can offer.

Joe Piecuch

[Paul Joppa]

The technically simple answer is no, it's not a problem.

This is based on the observation that SETs (unlike high-feedback amps) have enough output impedance to totally swamp the resistance of any reasonable wire. There may of course be more subtle effects that have as yet no known technical basis.  :^)

I am old enough to have seen the broad consensus that 10 or 12-gauge solid core was the best speaker wire, followed by the emergence of multi-strand as superior, and then the extended fashion for small-gauge solid core, and of course silver vs copper vs graphite(!) vs tungsten ...  so I take the more subtle effects with a grain of salt, even when I hear them myself.

[khingila]

thanks so much; i appreciate it.

[mkane]

  Heck, mines 30'.

[Bill Epstein]

I've been "swamping" 20 feet of triple braided 16 gauge with my SET for years 'cause I figured, A: My passive control to amp ICs should be short and B: Mastering studios use miles of speaker cable.

[Doc B.]

Studios don't typically use long runs of speaker cable. They typically use long runs of line level cabling.