petehall347
the brandy coffee man
long speaker cables . they last longer than long rca cables ..
Short RCA + long speaker cable or long RCA and short speaker cable?
- Thread starter z-adamson
- Start date
Delta77
Super Member
I’m a Newbie but my guess would be ..
If running True Balanced signal wire ,then go up to 10’-15’ with signal wires..
If running Single Ended signal wire , keep the signal wire short up to 2’-5’..
Max length for Speaker wire ??
Don’t think I would feel comfortable going more than 15’-20’ with Speaker wire..
If running True Balanced signal wire ,then go up to 10’-15’ with signal wires..
If running Single Ended signal wire , keep the signal wire short up to 2’-5’..
Max length for Speaker wire ??
Don’t think I would feel comfortable going more than 15’-20’ with Speaker wire..
Again with the equipment the OP has it doesn't matter, it's not rocket science.
musichal
poet emeritus
Okay, he admitted he's a noob making a WAG, so let's go easy on him, fellers. Careful, noob, you never know when one of the lions might be hungry.
z-adamson
Addicted Member
True balanced as in XLR and or TRS? Heck, I have gone 50ft without problems there.
Low impedance paths (strong current) are more "stiff" than high impedance paths (weak current). From an EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) standpoint the strong current paths are more immune to interference than are the weak current paths. Therefore you want to have the least exposure (smallest length) in the weak current path - the line level RCA path.
whoaru99
Epic Member
There is nothing to compensate for in line level at this length. It's a high impedance voltage bridge. The current of the signal is so miniscule there is effectively no loss of level.
And, with anything remotely resembling decent shield, the odds of picking up noise in home environments is about as close to zero as can be without actually being zero.
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whoaru99
Epic Member
Yeah, balanced can go a long, long way. Check my report out on a 700-800ft balanced cable made from Cat5 Ethernet wire. In DIY a few months ago, I think.
That's nice to know.
whoaru99
Epic Member
A lot of people worry too much about what isn't likely to happen. Seems endemic, to a point.
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Some people worry about worry too much. Don't let a little worry about a little worry worry you. Too much.
whoaru99
Epic Member
What, me Worry?
Looks kinda like Prince Charles in his younger days! He never has had any worries to worry about has he?
twiiii
Lunatic Member
If the output impedance of the pre-amp is low enough and the input impedance of the amp high enough and you use good balanced inputs and outputs, then the shorter the speaker cable the better. . Unbalanced RCA isn't going to make that much difference either using low loss cable in either case. If you were using tube units of old with high output line level impedance, you would definitely keep the RCA cables very short and run heavy speaker lines.
Not trying to worry anybody - but I once fed a computer audio jack (low output impedance) through about 24 feet of some well shielded RG6 coax (foil and braid) into a high impedance RC network (to attenuate and "pre-unequalize") which in turn fed an unused PHONO input jack (also high impedance).
The new jury-rigged AUX IN setup sounded great - clean, bright, full, not smothered and boomy. Except when I turned on and off the hall lights, the bedroom lights, the bathroom lights, etc. Pop pop pop pop ...
JoeESP9
ESL's & tubes since 83
A pair of unbalanced (RCA to XLR) 6.5 meter IC's and four 5' speaker cables have worked well for me for many years. REW and a calibrated microphone say there is no high frequency roll-off in the audio band when using my (hybrid preamp) ARC SP-9MkIII.
Blue Shadow
Waiting for Vintage Gear from this century
Sure will if you use different quality cables in the mix. No reason to further open that can of worms until we work out the answer for the OP.
With mono amplifiers, short speaker wire is the ticket. Easy to craft the best for the situation since they are short. The longer line level cables are not a problem at that short a distance and good cable here can make that work very well. I know Kenwood's highly respected L-0xM mono amplifiers came with 1-meter speaker wire for sonic reason and the preamp for the series got the long interconnect for the preamp to the amp.
