Dear all,
This is my first topic in the Bryston circle. Therefore, I will first introduce myself. My name is Ziad. I live in Montreal, and I'm a big fan of Bryston. I bought my first Bryston amplifier more than 20 years ago when I was a student. Today, all my audio system is Bryston (BDP-1, BDA-2, BP26, 4BSST2). My speakers are PMC IB2.
I just moved into a new house, and I have the following constraint: There will be a distance of 40 feet between my Bryston units and the speakers. I am hesitating between two options:
First option: Use long speaker cables between my 4BSST2 amplifier and the speakers (40 feet). In this case, I will use 3 feet XLR interconnect between the BP26 and the 4BSST2. The speaker cables will be Mogami 3104. The XLR interconnect cables will be Mogami Gold Studio XLR-XLR.
Second option: move my 4BSST2 amplifier closer to the speakers. In this case, I will use long XLR interconnect cables (25 feet) between the BP26 and the 4BSST2 and shorter speaker cables from the amp to the speakers.
Hence, my question is the following: Which is better: use short speaker cables and long XLR interconnect cables or vice versa?
Thanks a lot for your help.
Hi Ziad!
Let me first welcome you aboard and congratulate you on a seriously good audio system!
As for your dilemma, this is how I will break it down for you:
If your speaker wires are sufficiently low resistance (less than 5 Ohm/km equalling 0,005 Ohm/m), then the said distance of 40 feet (aprox. 12m) would give a total resistance of 0,06 Ohm. While this might seem insignificant, remember that your Bryston amplifier has a very low output impedance. For the sake of the argument, if we assume it is 0,01 Ohm, then the cummulative impedance (amp output impedance + wire resistance) would be 0,07 Ohm, so seven times higher than if no wire was involved. The damping factor would thus be seven times lower. Because Bryston amplifiers are well designed, it might still be enough but as you can imagine, it is not an ideal situation.
On the other hand, as a general rule, the shorter the speaker wire, the better. This would of course mean your XLR cables would have to be a lot longer and your amplifier would be “removed” from the rest of the system. While this might be “better”, it might not be practical. For one, you would need an available A/C outlet to plug the amplifier in. Also, XLR cables are not a universal solution to all problems concerning noise. Given the required length, it would be better if they didn’t cross over any power cables or pass near a WIFI router or a similar wireless device. It would be best to check whether your XLR cables are “star-quad” configuration. It would be better if they were due to their higher immunity to these disturbances. On the other hand, if there are no disturbances of any kind, a simpler “twisted pair” XLR cables would probably be a better solution because of their generally lower capacitance.
The bottom line is that it depends on your specific conditions. Whichever solution you end up deciding on, you’ll be needing high quality cables. Sticking to proven brands like Mogami will ensure a high quality product and real-world specifications will be as advertised. I can’t help you with your specific models but given the fact you seem to already know about Mogami tells me you know what you’re doing or at the very minimum, have a pretty good idea about what to look for.
I am sorry this is not a definitive answer to your question but I hope it is useful.
Cheers,
Antun
