chances are that when you're putting together your new pc battle station or
home theater one of the last things you're thinking about is cable length i
mean obviously you want to make sure that you can get from a to b
but other than that how much does it really matter especially in an age when
most things are digital and the usual
mantra of enthusiasts when it comes to cables is
it either works or it doesn't just coil up the excess and throw it in a corner
right well let's start by discussing things
that are still analog cables such as speaker wires vga
cables you might still be using for older monitors and rca cables for
connecting av equipment that doesn't have digital jacks like HDMI or toslink
i have to take this sorry one moment
line is speaking analog signals depend on small
continuous changes in an electrical waveform you can learn more about that
here but the gist of it is that because analog signals rely on precise
variations in voltage they're susceptible to interference as well as
degradation the longer they have to travel the worse
this gets so then for this reason
shorter cables are better as well as
thicker ones since they have less electrical impedance which keeps your
signal from traveling as far as it needs
to this can result in an actual improvement in picture or audio
quality but if you've moved off of analog cables and gone completely
digital you might be a little surprised to know that length can still matter for
reasons other than not wanting to have a huge tangled mess of wires behind your
setup let's start with HDMI the common wisdom
about HDMI cables is that fancy thousand
dollar cables like this one from wire world
are basically pure snake oil and one two
spec HDMI cable is generally as good as
another which by the way you can learn more about here
but that doesn't mean that length is
irrelevant digital signals are much less
susceptible to interference because information is being sent in discrete
binary chunks rather than a continuous waveform so over short distances this
means that the wisdom is true
if the signal works it works and no
fancy cable or shorter cable will make your colors brighter or your sounds
clearer but HDMI runs longer than 50 feet or 15
meters can result in blocky artifacts or
signal drops unless you use a repeater
or an active cable with built-in electronics that boost the signal but it
isn't just av cables that have issues with signal strength i bet you didn't
know that usb cables also have a maximum
recommended length 5 meters for usb 2 a
mere 3 meters for 3 and anecdotal evidence would suggest
that more than a meter is tough for usb 3.1 10 gigabit
this is due to electrical reflections that can happen if there's not enough of
a delay between each bit of information
being sent down the pipe apparently this can even cause damage to
the cable or port go figure so it's this delay that limits how long
the cable can be while still transmitting data effectively
but again the solution is pretty simple and an active cable or a powered usb hub
that acts as a repeater can bridge the gap though if you're a diy kind of
person you can even connect a pair of usb controllers with an Ethernet cable
since both cat5 and cat6 cables can reach a hundred meters before signal
losses and interference with other circuits called crosstalk start to
become a problem but so far we've only talked about
traditional copper cabling what if you're using an optical cable instead
something like toslink for surround sound or an optical Thunderbolt cable
well optical cables use light which can be
attenuated if the cable isn't constructed well meaning that it loses
intensity at range along with its ability to carry information
think about how a flashlight or the headlamps on your car visibly get less
powerful the further away you are this is a common problem in toslink
cables which tend to be constructed with cheap plastic fiber limiting their range
to 10 meters at the most on the other hand the more premium Thunderbolt cables
are often made of data grade glass fibers which can reflect a light beam
down the pipe with far less attenuation meaning you can get them in lengths up
to 60 meters at least for Thunderbolt 2.
no word yet on optical cables for Thunderbolt 3.
so keep these tips in mind if you find yourself needing a long cable run it's
one of those few times in life where longer doesn't necessarily mean better
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