Lenght interlink

[Carl]

I’m moving my listening room from the attic to my basement. Conrad Johnson says interconnects should be kept as short as possible. In my specific situation it would be ideal that pre (17 LS) and power amplifier (11a) would be seperated about 3,5 to 4 meter. Will this cause problems and how to solve them ?

Thank you very much!

[roberto]

Hola Carl,

My experience tells me that 5m or so is the maximum length of the RCAs cable. More you might loose some high frequency and might be a possibility to capture hum. If you route and address the these cables in a such way that they are not adjacent to any power cable, and using a very good shielded cable, you are O.K. Induction is the problem. Any energized AC cable has 60Hz (50Hz in Europe and other countries) and this frequency might be induced if any audio cable is or almost touching it. The separation distance between the audio cable and a AC cable should be more than 1 inch. Less you might have this unwanted induction.

Happy listening!

[AnotherJohnson]

I am in general agreement with Roberto about the importance of the routing and the advice to avoid house power distribution wiring.

And certainly I do not question his experience with single ended cables up to 5 m. But my own experience is that less than 2 m is better than more than 3 m. Of course my experience is based on what we know was a particularly hum prone pair of CJ monoblocks.

Your experience will be strongly affected by the RFI and other electrical interference that may be present. No interference, maybe no problems. Of course the longer the interconnects, the less directly coupled the pre and power amps.

I think you’ll have to try it and see (actually hear). If I were laying out a new “single ended” installation, I would work to avoid the need for more than 3 m interconnects if it were at all possible.

[Carl]

Thank you both very much. At the moment I use 5 meter Ocos cable as loudspeaker cable. Lenght does not matter at all because it is a coax cable with constant impedance. I think I better keep it like that.

[admin]

I would try everything possible to keep that RCA connection shorter (ideally less than 2 m). If you can't, probably make sure it's a well shielded cable. I would worry less about longer speaker cables.