Cable Management Tips and Tricks

Thing is that cables carry current. The higher the current, the higher the inductance. The higher the inductance, the more interference with nearby cables and also the more attenuation of high frequencies.

Coiling cables also increases inductance. Bottom line: phono can be together, interconnects can be close together if they have good shielding, speaker cable should be kept well away from both of the above, AC power cords are poison and should intersect everything else at a right angle. 

the basic cable management principle is that your cables are singing along with the music and that resonance will in essence become part of your noise floor, which obscures musical information and also can smear the textures and microdynamics. not all systems are equally affected, but none are immune. another secondary principle is that heavy stiff cables will pull down on your gear and affect the rack, footers, plugs and chassis. it’s good understand what the issue are. the great thing about cable management is that it can cost you almost zero dollars, it’s easy to find tools that are DIY. so it’s mostly just a bit of time and experimentation to find a bit more ’free’ performance. it might not make an audible difference, but it might be a nice boost. so you should go into it with low expectations and see where it takes you.

here is a cable management thread i just started on another forum that might be helpful to understand the issues involved (read both pages to the end to see where i ended up);

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/floating-speaker-cables-on-the-cheap.33707/

my particular system is more affected by cable management since i use active isolation. which means that the isolation uses piezo electric sensors and actuators to isolate gear from resonance. heavy cables hanging off my gear will dampen the ability of the active to react to attenuate resonance.

if you use decoupling footers or racks for your gear then making sure your cables don’t adversely affect your decoupling can be significant.

@ brylandgoodman ...
How much impact one cable on another. depend on the geometry of the cables being used. 

Convectional cable geometries i.e. 2 or 3 wires in parallel, are the worst
and having them run in parallel should be avoided

Advanced cables geometries like those from In-Akustic and Nordost are less prone to cable placement issues

I have held one of my turntable cables next to an active power cable in my clenched fist and experienced very little hum with the system turned up to full volume (but not playing)

The other posters are spot on
- Coils should be avoided
- if anything a figure 8 approach is much better than a coil
- keeping cables apart and crossing at as close to 90 degrees is best

Shielding a cable may have some benefit, but it impacts the sound - I prefer unshielded cables 

Regards - Steve

Here’s another thread. Ideally, no cables should be coiled, running parallel or touching. Signal cables and power cables definitely should be carefully spaced apart. The rats nest behind the rack should look like an intentionally arranged 3-D wireframe