Cables from amp to preamp or longer speaker cables…


So today I was in the room that I’m setting up for dedicated listening. Speakers will be at the front of the room and sofa will be at the other end. I dug out a pair of expensive speaker cables I had from many years ago and discovered they are only about six feet long. This would be ok if I had my rig set up behind the speakers but I want to sit on that sofa at the far end of the room (12 feet away) and have my Benchmark DAC 3 HGC beside me so I can plug headphones in occasionally……do I buy long speaker cables (probably expensive), or would I place my amp behind the speakers and run long cable from that to the preamp beside the sofa and if so would this long cable create any issues?

thomastrouble

My speakers are in front of a bare wall and my gear is off to the side. Speakers are bi-wired with long runs of Kimber (I think) 6TC and 8Tc (but that was a long time ago, so I am not positive) and interconnects are 1.5 m of balanced Kimber Silver Streak (I went with 1.5 m because once upon a time I needed more flexibility with gear position).

I personally think my system is sounding fantastic at the present, but this thread has got me rethinking what the sonic advantages might be if I put the amp (Cary V12) on the floor between speakers with short cables and hooked amp to pre with long balanced interconnects. I would need a much longer power cable to do that, however.

Speaker cable you can run for several meters without any noticeable sound difference if they are designed right, no need to cost much either.

 

+1 au_lait        

I ran these with 30K active speakers they sound terrific!  For the money, unbeatable.  And you can order custom lengths.  Bets of luck.

Since you have a lot of Benchmark gear in your system, you may want to check out the Benchmark website and look at their balanced interconnects. They use a Canare starquad cable and charge $144 for a pair of 25-foot cables. You might be able to find more expensive ICs that sound better in your system - but you might not. This could be a good route to go if you're trying not to spend too much money on long ICs.

I have had long runs of interconnects (5 - 7 meters) both balanced and unbalanced for two decades now with really no issues.  Presently, my RCA (unbalanced) interconnects are Audio-Envy and work very well, noise-free and are very articulate, while reasonably priced.  They are low capacitance cables.  The longer your runs, the more capacitance in the cables may have some attenuation in the treble range.