I was wondering before i did it if, if you have your front right speaker connected to your amp with 4 feet of speaker wire then your front left with 9 feet would there be a delay in sound that would be noticed

 

lol no


if there was, i doubt a human ear would be able to pick up the difference .. especially in a car lol

 

Not that you could detect. There is a relative delay, but it'd have to be about 1000x that difference before you might begin to notice.

 

^^ yes it is theoretical that it's happening. But since electricity basically travels at 96% the speed of light (if uninsulated) and about 66% through shielded (rough estimate). So yes it is happening, can you really hear it? not really

Now what you could hear is the difference in time delays from the positions of the speakers. left front closer to your ear than the right front speaker. That delay is something you could recognize. Alpine had a feature about delay I think it's called IMPRINT if i remember correctly. That took into account the different distances of speakers and the time delay with physical distance.

hope that helps!

 

^ Absolutely right! Path length differences make a HUGE difference, and one of the best things a person can do to improve their system is to try and equalize them by speaker placement. Doors really suck because one speaker is so close and off-axis, with the other being far away yet on-axis, which is why it's common for people really serious about autosound to mount their components in the kick panels.

That's the best way to do it, but as sciontc_mich mentioned, you can also do it using time-delay. It's been used in pro-sound for many years, and has been built into some head units for several years now. The problem with this is that when you delay the speaker closest to you so that it's output reaches you at the same time as the more distant speaker, it's only good for one listening position, the delay just made it even worse for the other listening positions. This is why making the speakers more equidistant is a superior method, as it improves the sound for all listeners.

FWIW.