Thanks for the info guys, and Happy New Year !
Pass Labs X260.8
I'm a slave to this hobby
I have been running my Sonus Faber Electa Amator III with a Pass Labs XA25, and it sounds great. I listen to mostly phono, Linn LP12 and Pass Labs XP15 phono pre.
Although the XA25 is a sick amp and runs way above 50 wpc at 4 ohms, I could not help but think I needed more headroom. Anyway, I pulled the trigger on a pair of demo 260.8s. Yes, way more than what I need, but screw it, I worked my ass off this year.
So, currently, I have my stereo rack on the right side of my bedroom, but the speakers are on a 90 degree wall, 10' away. I have very nice Morrow SP5 bi wire speaker cables that run 26' down into the basement, and then up to the speakers. I have 3' of slack to move the speakers out from the wall when serious listening. For casual listening I move them back closer to the wall, so my wife doesn't kick them over out of frustration when walking by. My question is, do I leave the SP5 speaker cables at 26' and place the 260.8s in the rack, OR purchase 26' balanced cables, and have the 260.8s on the floor between the speakers with shorter speaker cables. Yes, my wife will hate this arrangement, but because I have been relegated to the corner of our bedroom for my ridiculous hobby , I may be willing to die on that hill. But it really comes down to the best sound. I sit 8' away from the speakers and they are 8' apart when 30" off the wall. 26' balanced cables or 26' speaker cables. The general consensus will be longer speaker cables, but I always see mono blocks right next to the speakers....
- ...
- 16 posts total
I can't afford most of the cables made by Stealth, but they do have a good tech discussion on their website that deals with the decision about longer speaker cables vs. longer interconnects. Stealth strongly supports longer interconnects rather than long speaker cables. Ideally, both should be fairly short IMO, but that isn't always possible in real-life living spaces. |
@marktheshark - I would definitely go with the amp as close as possible to the speakers and use speaker cables that are as short as possible. I would also opt for speaker cables with totally separate +ve and -ve wires to reduce noise contamination between +ve and -ve conductors. Conventional cables (i.e. with both conductors side by side in a single cable) will create noise in the conductors - especially with the PASS amps There are not many brands out there that will work their best with the Pass amps because of their symmetrical balanced approach, so you might have to resort to making your own (or have them made) You could use Neotech stranded (or solid) UP-OCC wire to build your own short cables and attach Furuz Silver plated Spades or Bananas that can be attached by solder or even screw termination.like this one For the XLR cables, checkout professional grade band gear - there are some very robust and flexible options - like these... OR Another established brand in the live music world is Custom Series Microphone Cable | Accessories | D’Addario (daddario.com) I use all of these cables for band work - in both XLR and single ended designs and their construction is very good and they sound great also + very affordable compared to audiophile grade products Hope that helps - Steve |
williewonka, thank you for the info, that is interesting about separating the + and - conductors of my speaker wires. I was using 26' bi-wire Morrow speaker cables, and now changed over the XLRs for the longer run. I have cut the pair of speaker cables into 4 lengths, each length has 8 smaller conductors in parallel. I will experiment with using different configurations, bi-amping, biwire and now biconductor. |
- 16 posts total