electricalmusicsoundspeakerswire
I have Sony 5.1 channel sound system. There is some cut on covering of subwoofer wire. The copper wire is not affected at all. So, I am curious to know whether it will leak the passage of sound and hence, the sound quality will be affected or not?
Is there any disadvantage of it?
If the lengths of your wires are short and gauge (thickness) of the wires is large then your configuration will have no noticeable impact on the audio aside from the impedance issue -- which will only reduce power/volume if you design correctly and corrupt the audio if you don't.
You can run into trouble with phasing at long distances. Since the length between amplifier and speaker A is L1 and amplifier and speaker B is L1 + L2 it is impossible for both speakers to be playing exactly the same sound at exactly the same time. This difference in output is called a phase shift which is a mathematical term expressing the difference in angle between two equi-periodic signals represented in a polar plane (in case you care ;).
It takes sound about 3 milliseconds to travel 1 meter in air while the audio signal can travel through 450,000m (450km) of cable in the same timeframe. When your distances get to 100's of meters phase shift can become critically important. It depends on your configuration and how sensitive your application is to distortion.
Typical circuit diagram from the manual shows a 1K resistor to ground and capacitive coupling. Both are necessary. The 10K may also be required.
Best Answer
Although I'm tempted to state there's some special effect from the insulation capacitance and characteristic impedance that only the golden-ear audiophile can hear (a stunning difference!), no there is no measurable direct effect from that bit of insulation being there or not. The insulation keeps the wire from shorting to the other wire or to ground.
You can wrap some electrical tape around the bare spot and get on with your life. Heat shrink tubing might be a bit more attractive, but the kind of insulation used for speaker wire is sometimes very low melting point so you might further damage the wire with the heat gun.