Shorter speaker runs or shorter IC Runs...Which is the better set up and why?

Missingtime...or "missing the point"...I was recording performers for a TV musician interview series a while back and noticed that better balanced cables sounded better, period. Using great headphones is an easy way to hear this, as simply live reinforced sound masks those benefits as they are relatively small. Understand? Good.

Ralph, can you explain why on Earth some designers and makers of consumer electronics go to the trouble and expensive of providing balanced connections (if not circuits), and then don't do it "correctly", to conform to the AES standard? To do that defeats the whole purpose of balanced! It costs no more to do it right, either. Just connect the correct wires to the correct XLR pins. Duh.

My guess is that they don't know about the standard, don't care, don't want to the expense and stigma of an output transformer or some combination thereof.


The only other way to really do it right (so the output really does ignore ground) is the way we do it, which is patented.

For those wanting true balanced connections (for all the benefits afforded, including the elimination or at least minimization of cable artifacts), know that beside all of Ralph Karsten’s Atma-Sphere products, others doing balanced correctly are Roger Modjeski in his Music Reference products and Tim de Paravicini at EAR-Yoshino. Paravicini does a lot of pro studio work, and his pre-amps are designed to drive a 600 ohm load (the recording studio standard), a brutally-demanding task.

Without a doubt put the amps by the speakers and use long interconnect runs.  It will sound amazingly better and certainly save a ton of money vs doing it the opposite way.  Depending on what brand of speaker cable you get and at what level it is, many people generally get longer lengths for the ability to resell.  You may only need 3 or 4 feet, but again, depending on the cable and particularly if you think this is not going to be the last set of cables you’re going to own, then you may want more like 6-8ft lengths that will be easier to sell to a broader range of people.