Shorter speaker cables would be my choice. Then again power cable length would have to fit into the equation.
Long interconnect or speaker cable
My room configuration requires that my rack is off to the side of my speakers. This means I need to run 20 feet of speaker cable (Wireworld) from my Mc mono blocks. This makes high end speaker cable cost prohibitive.
I was thinking I could move the amps next to the speakers, have short higher quality speaker cables, and then a long run of moderately priced XLR interconnects from my preamp.
So, all things being equal, what’s better for SQ, a long run of lesser XLRs or speaker cables?
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- 17 posts total
The rule of thumb is to break between the preamp and amp, so long interconnects and very short speaker cables. It is ideal to put mono blocks next to the speaker they power. You get a big performance gain with 1 - 2’ high quality speak cables. The shorter the better. XLR is not required for that length… but they certainly will not hurt and may help. But if it is a trade off between much better quality interconnects and XLR I would likely choose single ended. If you have short interconnects (both rca and XLR) I would compare them and see if there is a notable difference. While my preamp and amp is of balanced design and the manufacturer recommends XLR… I could not hear a difference. That being said, I bought XLR because I could afford them ($5K) and it was worth the piece of mind. But it is up to the individual. Going from RCA to XLR was nearly $3K more. |
@w123ale - +1 for short speaker cables And get stands for the amps Getting the amps off the floor looks much nicer and aids isolation You should tale a look at Zavfino XLR and speaker cables - great perofrmance at reasonable prices Regards - Steve |
Certainly longer xlr. As for the speaker cable, do not do less than 5-6ft even if the length required is something like 3ft. You want to allow the speaker cable to do their job. Too short of a run and you can get added noise into the speaker because of the fact that it is so short, as speaker cable has an ability to dissipate unwanted noise over longer runs respectively and not going too long where you get signal loss. If you are going to keep them super short, be sure to use a smaller awg cable as to reduce signal to noise. It’s an issue some powered speakers can run into. Cables are like tone controls, longer and shorter runs of identical speaker cable can sometimes sound different on the same set up. |
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