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?

 

w123ale

@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. 

So, my REL subs are upfront near my floor standers. Would there be any concern about the vibration of the subs next to the mono blocks? I’d put the 601s on small stands which would help, but I’m sure the bass energy would still cause the amps to vibrate. Maybe it doesn’t matter for amps?

I chuckle sometimes that we are so obsessive about cable length. I agree that the longer run should be XLR whenever possible. If it makes you uncomfortable to have a 20 foot run of XLR between your preamp and amp, note that in live venues they run hundreds of feet of this cable, sometimes all the way to a recording van outside. Even in studios there can be 100+ foot runs of XLR. I have never seen one of the master recording engineers express a concern about XLR cable length.