2. cables
  3. 124521-7789

Creating space between interconnects & keeping cables off the floor

I strongly doubt this is an original idea, but since I came across it on my own, I thought I would share it and solicit the opinions of fellow Audiogoners. Conventional audio wisdom seems to be that power cables should be elevated off the floor and interconnects should not interconnect with one another (i.e., cross)  if at all possible. If you have a minimalist system, that may not be a major problem. But if you have a lot of separates and only a narrow space behind your racks to accommodate all the connections, it can become a real problem, as it was for me. Various companies offer various (but generally expensive... and not always effective)  solutions for this. For instance, since I use mostly Shunyata power cords and conditioners, my first instinct was to try their Dark Field Mini separators for the web of interconnects behind my system. While these may work as advertised for the thicker and heavier interconnects that Shunyata makes, they were useless on my thinner, but beloved Nordost interconnects, which lacked the weight and the mass to keep the Minis from falling to the floor. Ditto with my Ocos speaker cables. Short of redesigning my entire system, I didn't know what I could could about it until, one day, while walking down the wrong aisle at CVS in search of dental floss, I came across packages of wooden clothes pins. Forgetting all about the dental floss, I bought them on an impulse, took them home, and discovered they make stable lifters and separators for normal width cables. They attach easily to my speaker cables and, spaced about 3 or 4 feet apart, keep them about 3 inches off the floor. If you use them to separate interconnects behind your system -- with the grip end around one cable and the other cable sandwiched between the handle end, the separation is about 1.5 inches... A really cheap, easy and, as far as I can tell, effective way to help tame the tangled web of wires behind one's system. But I'd be interested in what others who have tried this have to say about it. Thanks
mross1949
perfectpathtech's avatar
perfectpathtech
236 posts
 
Thought I would toss in my 2 cent opinion. One day the wife and I were listening, and I picked a power cord up, and she said hey what did you do? I picked up a power cord off a cable riser no less. I did it again, then she did it for me, I could not believe what I heard. After giving it some thought, like a lot of you guys did, I came up with 5
ceiling hooks, 5 s hooks, and a roll of 20lb fishing line. I wound up suspending 6 power cables, 4 IC's, and a pair of speaker cables.
The finished project resulted in of the biggest changes in our system bar none, and it cost under 10 dollars! Better deeper more defined bass, overall sound more relaxed or organic, and believe it or not,
another layer of hidden information revealed! As far as looks ours
was laid out symmetrical, and looks pretty cool, the wife thinks so too. All I can say is hanging all cables is a must! 
slaw's avatar
slaw
21,601 posts
 
How far off of the floor did you find the best result?
slaw's avatar
slaw
21,601 posts
 
I find it cool that you always refer to your system as yours. You and your wife. You are one lucky guy!

I already have hooks in my ceiling from years of listening to  various acoustic panels. So, I'm not afraid of this sort of thing.
perfectpathtech's avatar
perfectpathtech
236 posts
 
Thank you! I truly mean OURS, she's the best, the only one in the house that likes the system more then her is Mr Black our cat, no joke!  

Slaw, I hung the speaker cables 6-10 inches off the floor, 4-5 feet
off the floor for the rest. I will post pictures of my system in the next month. IMHO should be a mandatory rule in setting up a system,
I know I wish I had known about this 30 years ago, it really is  that good! I forgot to mention from 100db and up you can actually see some of them sway slightly in the air. Look forward to hearing about your results Slaw!

gbmcleod
460 posts
 
I’ve not had a cable on the floor since 1990, when Enid Lumley of TAS, espoused the idea that something to do with "skin effect" caused cables lying directly on the floor to sound blurrier.
What the hell, thought I. I got up immediately and poised the cables on the edges of hardback books (thick ones, like War and Peace) and much to my surprise, since I had a Versa Dynamics, WATT/Puppies and Jadis and Goldmund electronics, heard the difference immediately. (I also had had two dedicated circuits installed earlier, and a Tice, so I could trust my ears).
I have no idea why, but keeping interconnects apart from each other - and from power cords - eliminates a sort of blur to the sound that makes inter-transient silences between notes noticeably better. And really, it costs nothing to try it out with hardback books either stood up with the books wide open, so that the cables aren’t touching a solid block of the book. I tie my interconnects with string. I even do tests for friends who say, "Oh, you have golden ears (right!). I won’t hear it." I just instruct them to listen to a singer’s voice (one they like, because it holds their interest. The other night it was Linda Ronstadt) and they hear it instantly.
I have Shunyata Dark Cable Elevators, too: several iterations of them and they do work. But you could HEAR the effect by using CD covers, hardback books (paperbacks seem to fall over too easily) or anything else where you have the cable just on the EDGE of whatever you’re draping it over. Don’t lay it across the entire surface of anything: that’s almost as bad as having it on the floor. It seem that the more it hangs in free air, the purer the sound. I do the same with power cords, although I have tube traps all around the room, and simply sick the power cords between two stacked tube traps.
EVERYTHING makes a difference.
And turn off your microwaves, dedicated circuits or not. Must be something in the microwave circuitry, but I’ve tested it in several friends’ homes with completely different equipment, and they have dedicated circuits, too. You’ll hear it in the 3-5k range most easily (triangles and their overtones, or glockenspiels).
Crazy hobby, but it need not cost a fortune. The room is the most important factor. The other night a new buddy, who’d never heard my system before, moved a tube trap. I just about blew my stack (silently) as I had said 3 times, "Don’t touch ANYTHING." And last night, hearing Ronstadt, I moved the trap he touched, and experienced annoyance: with tube traps, the slightest move of the cylinder (either rotating it or moving it down the wall in fractions of an inch) can cause you to lose extremely subtle improvements, such as hearing the "d" on "kicked" or even the "k". So do keeping the interconnects separated!
More to discover