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Interconnects priority

Greetings!

I am mulling over my interconnects and one question I have is, which interconnect is the most  important, if any, in the chain.

My setup is a Rega P8 with a Hana SL LOMC cart, into a Moon 310 LP / 320S phono stage, onto a PrimaLuna EVO 400 preamp and finally into a McIntosh MC312 power amp.

I am contemplating which interconnect (using XLR in my case) is the most critical to the sound/signal path, the one from the phono stage to the preamp or from the preamp to the power amp?

Or, looking it from another practical budget perspective, if I have a total of of $1,000 to spend is it clear that I should spend $500 on each XLR pair, or should I “overweight” my spend on one set because it’s the more “important” interconnect from a sound quality perspective.

(Of course assuming the interconnects are of equal length so that’s not a factor.)

Would love to hear this knowledgeable group’s thoughts on this - thanks!

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mclinnguy's avatar
mclinnguy
717 posts
 

My system only has one pair of interconnects.  I believe the simpler the system is, the better it sounds.

@carlsbad (links don't seem to be working...)

I would think if that were your philosophy, you would be considering the Grimm LS1 speakers, and could eliminate all the interconnects? 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,443 posts
 

Bimmer…in my experience the best ROI in interconnects is preamp to amp. There are exceptions though. In case of silver/ copper mix, having silver between source and pre and copper from pre to amp always sounded more natural to me. In example I had AZ Silver Ref II and Matrix Ref II interconnects. The Matrix between pre and amp were much better the Silver between there. And Matrix is a cheaper cable. You have to try. 

If I were to upgrade cables, I’d start with speaker cables though and work my way up the audio chain. 

Have you considered cartridge and phono amp upgrade?

dayglow
1,990 posts
 

It depends on your components. Unless you have a very cable sensitive power/pre combination, I have found that digital source gear has the widest discrepancy with IC's. 

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bimmerlover's avatar
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bimmerlover OP
58 posts
 

@mclinnguy Thanks.

Can you/someone explain to me how you take a part of a previous post and include it in your own, like you have done a couple of times above (the pasted text in the yellow box), and do the @xxxxx references (like I have tried in this post) actually work and notify that user they are being referenced, or how do you make those references actually a true tag?

I am trying to learn the Audiogon posting/response ropes…

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