I bought two sets of $19.99 monster cables from Target. They are each 15 feet long. The combined distance from my DVD player to my receiver, and from my receiver to my TV is less than 5 feet! Am I losing quality?

My thought is you should only buy the length you need. If that 5 feet then I believe they sell 6ft cables.
I believe you do loose some quality, but it might not be noticible. You also could suscept that cable to noise.

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Mike

From what I've heard, it's girth that really matters. Of cables, I mean.

Phew! Glad that's cleared up - I thought this was a thread that should belong in the Other forum

It's not the size, it's how you use it.

From a circuitry standpoint, the longer a cable is that passes a signal, the more resistance that cable has, and thus, the signal to be transmitted will attenuate more and will be more susceptible to outside noise. Over long distances, this attenuation can cause serious loss of signal. However, with 15 ft., you're not going to be able to discern a noticeable difference in signal quality through your speakers. If you were trying to run this cable underground and over to your neighbor's HT -- that might be a different story.

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Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any.

I thought of several crude responses but unfortunately I wasn't able to get it up quick enough.

-Gonnosuke

Here's all you need to know on this subject:

The signal from your receiver travels to your speakers at roughly the speed of sound (299,792,458 meters per second). Now when you're sending this through a 15 ft cable (4.572 m) the signal would take roughly 0.00000001525 s to get there. With a 6 ft cable (1.8288 m) the signal takes 0.0000000061 seconds. If you think you'll be able to tell the difference between them go for it. But I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference between a 300 ft cable and a 3 ft cable (as long as their clean and not broken in any places).

That's the main concern with longer cables. Signal degredation, but that will only occur in shitty cables or cables exceeding 100 ft. You'll be fine with whatever you use...

quote:<HR>Originally posted by PoorBoy:
Here's all you need to know on this subject:

The signal from your receiver travels to your speakers at roughly the speed of sound (299,792,458 meters per second.<HR>

If you meant to say speed of "light", it would be about 300,000 km/sec. I have never seen it expressed in meters before. But I'm not certain that the velocity through copper wire would be the same as that through a vacuum.

edited because I was duh



[This message has been edited by LtlPhysics (edited January 19, 2001).]

quote:<HR>Originally posted by LtlPhysics:
If you meant to say speed of "light", it would be about 300,000,000 km/sec, which is a lot faster. But I'm not certain that the velocity through copper wire would be the same as that through a vacuum.

<HR>

You are correct. The speed of light in free space is roughly 3 x 10^8 m/s, where as the speed of light in any other medium is governed by the relative permittivity of that medium (usually denoted as epsilon).


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Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any.

Yeah, my bad. I meant speed of light. The speed of sound is pathetic in comparison. But I think my post even in it's errors made it's point.

And I know it's not km/s, I'm really sure it's m/s.

it is 3 x 10^8 m/s, poorboy, you are right.

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Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any.

Sorry guys, I had to correct my post, I lost it. I've been watching Fox News too much.

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Throttle, more throttle

You know, with the speed of light so close to 300,000 km/sec, why not adjust the meter just a little to equal exactly 300,000 km/sec.= c. The metric system is all arbitrary anyway and in the real world, how would that impact Olympic scoring?

299,792,458/300,000,000=.999308193...
300,000,000/299,792,458=1.000692286...

The kilo is based on what, some cylinder of metal in Paris? We could start a movement to base the meter on something that really is a constant of nature.

*our eight fingers and two thumbs are a given.



[This message has been edited by LtlPhysics (edited January 19, 2001).]

quote:<HR>Originally posted by LtlPhysics:
Sorry guys, I had to correct my post, I lost it. I've been watching Fox News too much.
<HR>

Watch out. The symptoms of having to think about things and draw your own conclusions are starting to show.