Speaker cable vs. interconnect cable length

I'm reviving this thread, becuase I am now faced with the same situation. It seems that if one has to look at long ICs, using balanced is recommended. But what if (as in my case) my amp only has RCA inputs? Is there any value at all in using a balanced cable which then has to go through a Balanced / RCA converter?

That's what I suspected. So, in a case of an RCA IC, is it still a better idea to go long IC / shorter speaker cable?

Yes, I have a SS preamp, but I'd be looking at ICs on the order of 20' or so.

Tgun5, that's out of my price range. I like the concept, though. We use stuff like this all the time at work - that is, wire to fiber converters. Mostly either for digital data or streaming video. The fiber converters we use, however, are not that small.