2. cables
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Interconnects priority

Greetings!

I am mulling over my interconnects and one question I have is, which interconnect is the most  important, if any, in the chain.

My setup is a Rega P8 with a Hana SL LOMC cart, into a Moon 310 LP / 320S phono stage, onto a PrimaLuna EVO 400 preamp and finally into a McIntosh MC312 power amp.

I am contemplating which interconnect (using XLR in my case) is the most critical to the sound/signal path, the one from the phono stage to the preamp or from the preamp to the power amp?

Or, looking it from another practical budget perspective, if I have a total of of $1,000 to spend is it clear that I should spend $500 on each XLR pair, or should I “overweight” my spend on one set because it’s the more “important” interconnect from a sound quality perspective.

(Of course assuming the interconnects are of equal length so that’s not a factor.)

Would love to hear this knowledgeable group’s thoughts on this - thanks!

bimmerlover

Showing 3 responses by bimmerlover

bimmerlover's avatar
bimmerlover OP
58 posts
 

@mclinnguy Thanks.

Can you/someone explain to me how you take a part of a previous post and include it in your own, like you have done a couple of times above (the pasted text in the yellow box), and do the @xxxxx references (like I have tried in this post) actually work and notify that user they are being referenced, or how do you make those references actually a true tag?

I am trying to learn the Audiogon posting/response ropes…

bimmerlover's avatar
bimmerlover OP
58 posts
 

To format something as a quote just copy/paste what you want into the text box, and then with the cursor at the end of that sentence/paragraph click the quote icon at the top if the text box and that’s it

Thanks @soix!

bimmerlover's avatar
bimmerlover OP
58 posts
 

A big thanks to everyone for sharing their opinions, which interestingly varied quite a bit.

“The phono stage to the preamp [as closer to the source is most important]” - 2+ votes

”The preamp to the power amp [because everything goes through that ic]” - 2+ votes

”They are both important but start with the speaker cables and work you way up backwards”

Spend, in essence, $970 on one and $30 on the other, with at least minimum quality (eg a Mogami cable from WBC) “so you can upgrade the second one later and thus end up with two great ic’s”

“Have you considered upgrading your cartridge” - this was an interesting one, as it didn’t address the question but, hey, that’s always a possibility at some point

So, I ended up buying three different pairs of ic’s and one pair of speaker cables, to play around with…:

XLR ICs:

Townsend Audio DCT 300

Wireworld Equinox 8

Vogue Audio Silver Strand Ultra

Speaker cable:

Harmonic Technology Pro-9+

(all purchased used from various places - mainly USAM - in very good condition)

So, plenty to play around with in different places in my audio chain…

How much fun, and thanks again for everyone‘s input!

 

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