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Room rearrangement. Cable question

I'm thinking of moving my large box furniture rack from its current position between my speakers to a location along a sidewall. The idea is to minimize speaker reflections and refractions off the center-positioned rack.
This leaves me with two options:
1) Running longer speaker cables  (15-20 feet) from the amp's new location on the sidewall to the speakers, or
2) Leaving the amp on the floor between the speakers (and putting it on a low platform), then running long interconnects from the preamp to the amp and using short speaker cables.
My Pass Labs XA25 amp does not have balanced connections.
Thoughts? Feeling? Speculations?
Thanks.
kolledog

Showing 2 responses by millercarbon

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
I've never heard of suspending speaker cables. . what's the rationale behind that?

There's several. Most likely the main one is vibration control. Check out my system, and don't take my word for it but read the comments from people who have heard it. Deborah for example, had no idea, heard it with her eyes closed. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367   

This is also a good example of how to do a system that maximizes performance per dollar by minimizing wire length, among other things.

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Balanced is for pro use where "long" is 200 to 300 METERS. 20ft is not "long". It is however long in terms of you will never buy quality speaker cables that long. You will cheap out - everyone does - and this one thing alone will erase a lot of what you hope to gain with the move.

This is no idle speculation by the way. I have heard the difference and know what I’m talking about.

Another reason not to run long speaker cables, either they will have to be different lengths (killing you even more up front and even worse on the back end when you go to sell them) or the extra coiled up somewhere.

You will find it much easier and better to just run long RCA to the amp. Then normal length speaker cable. Don’t use a rack, put the amp on Townshend Pods. Or a Platform if you like the look better. Do not just lay the interconnects on the floor, suspend them every inch of the way. Same for the speaker cables. This is how you do it.

The rack by the way, all you are doing is moving a problem from one place to another. Ditch it. Do that and more than likely you can avoid this whole off to the side issue altogether.
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