Where to put best interconnects

@jafreeman 

I have had the most improvement from source to preamp. I just auditioned a pair of Audioquest Dragons vs. Thunderbirds. I was astounded that the Thunderbirds held their own from preamp to amp; however, the Dragons were substantially better from source to preamp. 

 

jafreeman OP

691 posts

01-29-2025 at 03:00am 

Will place the better cables at source, according to Lalitk.  Have SR Atmosphere Eurphoria SX as the newer, and Transparent Reference from 2003 as older, which are ok, but not as revealing.  
 

try it in both places. You don’t want a bottleneck between pre and amp. Tone, focus, imaging, soundstage are mostly attributes of preamp and amp (speakers too of course but we’re talking interconnect). Yes source matters but I assume you already have a decent source and you definitely have a decent cable in transparent. I bet the system would shine much brighter with a better cable on pre to amp. But I’ve been wrong before…definitely try though. 

When I used Transparent Audio Cables, they recommended source to pre as most important, then speaker cables, then pre to amp...I have generally found that to be true...

@lalitk 

+ 2 …bigtime .,,

First-best option is between source and preamp.  

Second-best option is between preamp and amp. 

Easy to test.  Put your best at preamp to amp first. Listen for a while. 

Then, swap the best to the source-to-preamp, and notice the difference.