Length of speaker wire

[crashwg]

How long is too long?

I recently rearranged my living room which caused a little problem for me...  All the wires I cut to the appropriate lengths for the previous arrangement won't work for me any more. 

I've got the front three speakers (5.1) wired up by scrounging the old wires and now have a 100ft roll of 24guage for the surrounds.  It crossed my mind that I should just cut the roll in half and have +/- 50ft for each speaker that I can stuff behind the receiver for future rearranging.

Any foreseeable problems with this?  My initial thoughts are that the wire is pretty small (bad thing) but the requirements for the surrounds should be pretty low (good thing) so do they balance out and if not how bad could it be?

[ChadTower]

Shouldn't be a problem unless your rears are way, way bigger than they need to be.  Rears don't carry much in a 5.1 program.

[CCM]

You probably want to use a bigger gauge wire than 24.  That's way too small for 50+ feet.  I would think 16 or 18 would do much better.

http://www.audioholics.com/education/frequently-asked-questions/speaker-cable-gauge-distance

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

[zaphod]

Personally I would use 20 gauge or less as well.  It's pretty cheap.  However, you have the 'zip cord' at zero cost.  For the surrounds, its likely not a big deal.  Just make sure you don't run it right next to electrical lines, and certainly do not coil up the excess as you'll end up with a wonderful antennae.

[boykster]

should be just fine for rear surrounds.  I echo that 24ga is pretty thin for speaker wire though.  I have several 200' + runs of speaker wire throughout my house for in-wall speakers.