Advantages of monoblocks

A point that has been alluded to above, but IMO warrants further emphasis, is that separating a design onto two chassis increases cost. And even more so if the design is separated onto two amplifier chassis plus a preamplifier. Therefore at a given price point the benefits that a monoblock approach can potentially provide trade off against the potential for a reduction in quality. How that tradeoff will net out can of course be expected to vary widely among different designs.

Personally, although I have no particular familiarity with any of the specific components that are involved, my instinct is to agree with Chayro and Bvdiman (although I express no opinion about the latter's cable upgrade suggestion). Replacing an $11.5K integrated amplifier with $4K worth of used monoblocks and a used preamp doesn't seem to me to be likely to result in an upgrade, unless something is particularly disappointing about the integrated in question, and/or its compatibility with the speakers.

Regards,
-- Al

05-03-14: David12
As an aside, people have mentioned short interconnects, long speaker cables, V the opposite, assuming you are using XLR's for long interconnect runs, are there theoretical reasons that mean short or long runs of either, should be better?

Nearly all effects of speaker cables and line-level analog interconnects can be expected to be proportional to length, everything else being equal. One conceivable exception being antenna effects, where certain unpredictable lengths of speaker cable may be more susceptible than others to picking up RFI that may be present and injecting it into the feedback loop of the amplifier, if there is a feedback loop in the particular amplifier.

In general, the lower the impedance of the speaker the more critical speaker cable effects will become, because the inductive reactance (the inductive form of impedance), resistance, and perhaps other less explainable cable factors will become more significant in relation to that lower speaker impedance. Therefore, as speaker impedance decreases keeping the length of speaker cables short becomes increasingly preferable.

And the higher the output impedance of a component which drives a line-level analog interconnect, the more critical that interconnect cable will become, because capacitive reactance (the capacitive form of impedance), and perhaps other less explainable cable factors will become more significant in relation to that higher output impedance. Therefore, as the output impedance of a component driving a line-level analog interconnect increases, keeping the length of that interconnect short becomes increasingly preferable.

Everything else being equal, balanced line-level interfaces will tend to be less susceptible to cable effects than unbalanced interfaces, in part because of reduced susceptibility to ground loop effects.

All of the foregoing applies to situations where none of the parameters of the cables that are involved are extreme. A few speaker cables, on the other hand, have extremely high capacitance per unit length, and different considerations may come into play in those kinds of situations. For example, the performance of some amplifiers may degrade, in some cases even to the point of oscillation, in the presence of extremely high speaker cable capacitance.

Also, all of the foregoing assumes that the goal is minimization of cable effects and colorations. From a subjective standpoint, that assumption will of course not always be applicable.

Best regards, to a fellow Daedalus owner!
-- Al