Interconnects priority

@soix

 These @ links used to autofill and turn blue, but as of recently for some unknown reason that doesn’t happen anymore.

It is a short term glitch I am told. 

+ 1 @coralkong & phantom_av

I recently had this same discussion with a friend who works in the audio business; and, we came to the same conclusion (# 1 = pre to amp); but, we also agreed that speaker cables would be a close second. 

A big thanks to everyone for sharing their opinions, which interestingly varied quite a bit.

“The phono stage to the preamp [as closer to the source is most important]” - 2+ votes

”The preamp to the power amp [because everything goes through that ic]” - 2+ votes

”They are both important but start with the speaker cables and work you way up backwards”

Spend, in essence, $970 on one and $30 on the other, with at least minimum quality (eg a Mogami cable from WBC) “so you can upgrade the second one later and thus end up with two great ic’s”

“Have you considered upgrading your cartridge” - this was an interesting one, as it didn’t address the question but, hey, that’s always a possibility at some point

So, I ended up buying three different pairs of ic’s and one pair of speaker cables, to play around with…:

XLR ICs:

Townsend Audio DCT 300

Wireworld Equinox 8

Vogue Audio Silver Strand Ultra

Speaker cable:

Harmonic Technology Pro-9+

(all purchased used from various places - mainly USAM - in very good condition)

So, plenty to play around with in different places in my audio chain…

How much fun, and thanks again for everyone‘s input!

(the new but not improved thumbs up, kind of looks like hitch hiking emoticon)

Let us know the results of your experiments

Perhaps you could let us know your answer to your question: insert one a time and determine which has the greatest impact. 

Source then preamp to amp then speaker cables.