[ekovalsky]

I plan on rearranging my listening room and moving the speakers to the wall 90 degrees from my equipment.  Right now the equipment is between the two speakers which isn't ideal for imaging.  In the process of creating a LEDE room, the equipment needs to go in the "live" part of the room, well way from the speakers.

I will need long runs of cable to accomplish this.  Is it better to have short interconnects then run long speaker cables, or should I use long interconnects to send signal to the amps, which I can place near the speakers and connect with short speaker cables?

Cable run will have to be at least 20-25'.

[meilankev]

After speaking with a couple of people who's opinion I respect, I went with "long interconnect / short speaker cable".  Then, based upon the recommendations of one of these guys, I also decided to go with balanced XLR connections (between the preamp and monoblocks).

I am in no position to do A/B comparisons between my setup and alternative configurations within my room.  So I will never know if it was worth the effort.

And since my system sounds fine as it is, I'm not real interested in proving anything to myself (or others).

Kevin

[Wayne1]

A lot depends on the ability of the preamp you use to have the current capability to handle the capacitive load a long interconnect would present.

It is far easier for a power amp to drive a longer run.

For more information look over this post by Jon Risch:

http://www.AudioAsylum.com/audio/tweaks/messages/1080.html

[Andrikos]

my intuition as an EE would be to route the low current low voltage signal (i.e. IC's) with the shortest route possible and route the rest of the length with the high voltage, high current signal (speaker cables).
The reason for this is that long runs of cables act as antennas and pick all kinds of garbage. Now if you have a low signal high impeadance situation (High impedance node) you're runnig the risk of picking up a lot of unwanted stuff you never knew existed.

To cut a long story short:
Keep your interconnects as short as possible and use only as long speaker cables as you need.

[Sedona Sky Sound]

In my testing, I found that interconnects had a significantly greater impact on sound than speaker cables in my environment. From a high frequency perspective, doubling the length (or capacitance) of an interconnect degraded the sound more than quadrupling the length of the speaker cable. Some of this difference, as Wayne pointed out, may just be the ability of the pre-amps I used to drive a long (or just longer) interconnect (but I used several and the difference seemed relatively consistant).

Long interconects will also mean that it will be necessary to use shielded cables. The added capacitance of the shielding can significantly attenuate higher frequencies.    

Finally, you have to be very careful with the placement of your rack in relation to your new RM/Xs. Small differences in placement will make a huge difference in room interaction/bass output. I was able to effect bass output by +/-2 dB by moving other objects in the my room only a few inches. While it does not seem to be the majority opinion on this forum, I still feel that a well placed/configured audio equipment rack between the speakers utilizing short interconnects/speaker cables will provide superior sonic results.

Best of luck.

Julian
www.sedonaskysound.com

[ekovalsky]

thanks for the replies.  what i should probably do is build out the wall of the media room behind the speakers to make a 2' deep recess to house the equipment.  cables could be kept short (IC < 2m and speaker cables < 3m) and there would be no hard objects between the speakers to interfere with the soundstage.

if i don't go that route, it sounds like long speaker cables are the way to go.  i refuse to spend more on speaker cables than speakers, so 20ft runs of kimber select, nordost, cardas, etc are out of the question.  i may check into julian's scorpion wire and wayne's nitro wire, plus the lowe's wire i've read about.  at a higher but still not insane price point the pure note epsilon reference, zcable passion v3, and zu ibis are also possibilities.  i use the pure note epsilon reference interconnects which are simply superb.