do you need to elevate interconnects?

I have elevated both interconnects and speaker cables. While I have found a definite improvement in sound, especially greater presence, with speaker cables, I've yet to discover any benefits by raising interconnects off the floor. Your experience may yield the same or different results. Explore on your own and see/hear what you get.

Incidentally, though I've had short and long (up to five meters)interconnects elevated off the carpet without audible improvements, I've never heard any "injury" to the sound while running them along baseboards, and I've never run them under a carpet.

Opus88, thanks for your response, very helpful. I wonder why more people don't avoid the whole elevating the speaker cable issue by going with longer interconnect runs and shorter speaker cables. While there is a lot of debate about whether longer speaker cable or longer interconnects are better, it would seem -- if indeed your experience is generally the case (no problems having interconnects on the floor) -- that this would be a big factor in favor of going the longer interconnect route.

Indeed, the argument/discussion over the issue of what should be longer or shorter is a never ending one (as evidenced by the subject's repeat play on this very site). I've used longer ics and shorter scs for so many years now, the matter doesn't really concern me any more. Besides, I respect everyone's right to find and live with what makes them happy.

I have seen Pierre from Mapleshade twist interconnects around and improve the sound. He maintains that there is only one correct orientation for each cable. However, I have never done this myself, I change my connections too often. But keeping the interconnects and speaker wires separated as much as possible is usually beneficial. I also am a believer in the long interconnects, short wires approach and usually use it, however it is not possible with my current Musical Fidelity M3, which is an integrated. The long speaker wire can be good, I am using Cardas Golden Reference, which is too expensive to bi wire with. It is usually cheaper , in my experience, to use the long cable approach.

Thanks Stanwal. I guess I'm still wondering about the main question -- which is generally in people's experience, do you need to elevate interconnects for the best sound?

Opus88's suggestion to try it and see is of course reasonable, but my problem is that in a new set-up I am contemplating, I don't want to buy the cable only to find it doesn't work....

I do it, but I admit the results are extremely subtle- to the point of there might be no real benefit.

I look at it as cumulative though, and any potential distortion being removed from the system as a (however small) step forward.

Best,

Will

Elevating cables only works with clever clocks and brilliant pebbles.

The synergy is virtually impossible to quantify.

Dan...Unless you already have ics and scs that you feel you might be able to "live with", your only opther options, it seems, are to take a chance with buying based on what you've read or heard from others or making an effort to contact The Cable Company and have them send you something for audition. True, there is a charge for borrowing, which can be used as credit toward buying from them, but even if you don't, you might find yourself in a better situation money wise in contrast to buying from someone outright and finding that you don't like what you've bought. Good luck, in any event.

FWIW I've used 25 and 15 ft runs of IC's on hardwood floors, at base boards on the room boarders and on/under carpets. In the air and on the floor surfaces. I've never detected any reason to prefer using lifts for IC's. But, everything else being equal, it was easy to distinguish the difference between those two runs of identical IC's which I assume was due to lengths. Maybe my stuff doesn't have high enuf resolution to reveal the benefits. :-)