Long speaker cables or long xlr from preamp

H

Howard R

New member
I am using a March Audio P262 to drive a pair of Dr. Rod Crawford's Legend Kurre Be bookshelf speakers. Because of the room layout the speakers have 15 m cables from the amplifier. The speaker cables are standard 14GA cable from an electrical store.
I am wondering whether I would be better off having the P262 much closer to the speakers using higher quality cable and having long XLR cables from my preamp to the P262 instead.
Any thoughts would be welcome.
Howard
 
Hi @Howard R
15m is pretty long for speaker cables. Although your cables are good guage/csa and will have low resistance, assuming they are typical ZIP style and geometry they will have inductance levels higher than ideal which could lead to some high frequency roll off. Their capacitance is less of an issue. This is why our speaker cables are quad geometry which minimises inductance.

Regarding resistance, the cables effectively Increase the output impedance of the amp. You will get a voltage drop across the cable that is proportional the varying impedance of the speaker with frequency. So if high enough you start to get audible frequency response variations.

Bottom line is whilst I do not recommend anything fancy with speaker cables (please dont beleive the snake oil from many manufacturers), definitely do keep them as short as possible.

Long interconnects can be a good way of doing so. Long interconnects present no problems at all and definitely my recommendation.

Hope that helps.

Alan
 
Much appreciated Alan. Whilst I am not over the technical stuff, intuitively I thought that the long interconnects were the least likely to cause trouble.
Regards,
Howard R
 
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