Long Speaker Cables/Short Interconnect or reverse
Weebeesdad.........I am in the same position as you. I run 20 foot pair of speaker cables under to the floor as my speakers are on opposite sides of the room from the audio rack. I am using an Audible Illusions Modulus 3B and for the same reason you have mentioned, I have stayed away from the longer interconnects. I have run 3 different systems like this over the past 35 years and I never felt I was missing anything. I am willing to bet you will run into all kinds of hum problems with the longer interconnects. I once talked to Audible Illusions about this and was advised against 20 foot unbalanced interconnects. |
Weebeesdad, thanks for the nice words. And thanks for providing the relevant specifics in your post. I'll mention first that I suspect that the actual output impedance of your preamp is somewhat higher than the specified 1.2K. The output impedance of the Audible Illusions Modulus 3A was identically spec'd at 1.2K, but was measured by Stereophile at close to 1.8K. That said, if you use a very low capacitance cable such as the Blue Jeans LC-1 (12.2 pf/foot) that was suggested by Czarivey, you should be ok with an 11 foot length as far as the most predictable adverse effects are concerned, namely the possibilities of high frequency rolloff and phase shifts. But as Stereo5 alluded to, a relatively long length such as that might increase susceptibility to less predictable length-dependent effects such as ground loop-related hum or noise. And the same possibility cannot be ruled out in the case of the CD player, despite its low output impedance. So although as you've probably seen in my posts in past threads on this question I tend in general to be biased somewhat in the direction of long interconnects/short speaker cables, in this case, given also the impedance of your speakers, my instinct (assuming you are happy with the sound quality you presently have) would be to leave well enough alone. Or if you do want to experiment, the Blue Jeans cable is fairly inexpensive, even at an 11 foot length, so there would be little risk in giving it a try. In saying this I'm assuming that the speaker cables are heavy gauge (i.e., gauge number not higher than 14), and have reasonably low inductance (say less than around 0.15 uH/foot or thereabouts). If you're not certain about those parameters, let us know the make and model of the speaker cables. Best regards, -- Al |
