Tube Monoblock location? - Rack or near speakers?

this may have been addressed earlier but here goes. It comes down to real and reactive power and IxIxR (I squared R, or power) losses on the cables. The current running on speaker cables is higher than on interconnect cables. Consequently the power losses on the speaker cables by using the equation above can make a drastic difference. It is typically better to have short interconnect and short speaker cables, but if you can't have it your way, then short speaker cables and long interconnect cables. This is simple electical engineering. There are less power losses on the long interconnect cables than there will be on long speaker cables. Also, there are reactive losses that increase/decrease the reactive impedance of the cables depending on the frequency of the signal. So, the general rule. Use cables as short as possible. But, if you can't then short speaker cables and longer interconnect cables. But, that means that the interconnect cables must be really good, properly shielded, etc. No matter what people say, it comes down to the ampacity of the cables and the impedance of the cables. That is why changing cables makes sometimes such a huge difference in sound. The manufacturer is playing with the impedance characteristics of the cables to alter the music signal and hence the interaction with your equipment and ultimately, the sound. This is not rocket science, but it is science.

enjoy

Minorl, what would you consider as an acceptable run of speaker cable (length?) thanks

For 4 ohms, 1 meter, for 8 ohms, 2 meters and 4 meters if 16 ohms. Hifitime, I have never heard what you are saying about balanced lines and it is simply untrue. You might tell whoever told you that that they are full of beans. I have yet to see RF problems in a balanced cable- the assertion is absurd!

Balanced lines were developed originally by the phone company decades ago and made trans-continental phone calls possible. A few years later they were in common use in the recording industry- most of your records and CDs were recorded with them, in some cases the cables were over 150 feet long.

In the home they solve the issue of speaker cable length quite elegantly. **If** the preamp supports the balanced line standard, then the length and the cost of the cable is not important in the overall sound. I have seen my 30 foot $85 pair of Mogami Neglex be indistinguishable from a $24,000 set of balanced cables 24 feet long. (The system was mbl101e speakers, with mbl power amps driven balanced by our MP-1)

I've done numerous PA setups over the years. One might interest you. It was in a concert hall- we needed a PA for the singers. The speakers were mounted in the ceiling so we set up amps and ran 40 feet of speaker cable to the speakers. You could not make out the words they were singing! Then we moved the amps to the speakers and ran the same cable, shortened to 1 meter long. We set up a transformer system that allowed us to run a balanced line between the mixer and the amps- the instant increase in clarity was startling!

I've done the same thing in my home, and BTW have a set of SRA stands for our amps as well. They do help (they are some of the best), but by far the bigger difference is seen in keeping the speaker cables short as possible. Since we can run a balanced line of any length with our preamps this is a very easy test to perform.

Atmasphere,Balanced lines reduce not block noise.

Hifitime, true, if the noise is in the signal. False, if the noise is common-mode (for example, impinged on the cable itself). Of course, you need a balanced input at the amp to take advantage of that.