Up till now I've only owned an AV receiver but I've become interested in the 950 pre/pro and the 200 M-blocks. I have a couple of questions.

You can either keep the M-blocks close to the 950 and have short lengths of the Interconnects (I'm assuming analog audio Interconnects with RCA plugs?) and lengthier runs of the speaker cable or put the M-blocks close to the speakers for shorter speaker cable and longer Interconnects.

Is one recommended over the other?

If I choose to go with longer Interconnects is there a recommended maximum length?

I'd go with longer speaker wires. The signal level is much higher in the speaker circuit, thus much less prone to interferrence. Just make sure you use a sufficiently large gauge of cable, like 12 gauge or bigger.

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The Soundhound Theater

This is from a recent Stereophile review:

"Arguably, the biggest drawbacks to single-chassis receivers and multichannel amps are the long runs of speaker cables required. Good cables are expensive and bulky, and having them all exit from a small plot of electronic real estate can be unsightly. But worse, as any serious audiophile will explain, long lengths of speaker cable, no matter how good, tend to degrade the sound, especially the bass. This is due to the damping factor, which has to do with an amplifier's ability to control the movement of the woofer cone. The higher the damping factor, the better the amplifier's ability to control cone movement, and thus the tighter, deeper, and more defined the bass will be.

The damping factor is defined as the ratio of the speaker's load impedance to the amplifier's output impedance. All things being equal, the higher the damping factor, the better. But the longer the run of speaker cable, the greater the resistance and the lower the damping factor.

The Monoblock Solution
One way to preserve an amplifier-speaker combo's potentially high damping factor, and thus good bass control, is to run long lengths of line-level interconnect from a preamp-processor to monoblock (single-channel) amplifiers placed close to each speaker"

Just ran across this and remembered this post on this forum. I have no clue about the technical realities of the above posted quote. I also have no intention of starting an arguement. I'm just posting what I read.

I would expect something like this from Stereophile - Yes, damping factor is important, but using a large enough gauge of wire will give a fraction of an ohm of resistance: not enough to make a difference in damping factor. Most people don't realize that the inductors that are in all conventional loudspeakers contribute much more resistance/reactance than even a relatively small gauge speaker cable. If inadequate damping factor is really a concern, bi-amping by using an external electronic crossover, and no passive crossover in the speaker is the only way to go. Interconnects are expensive and prone to picking up interferrence, especially long ones: that is much more of a real concern than any imagined loss of damping.

This is the main reason I stopped my subscription to Stereophile years ago.

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The Soundhound Theater

SH - Thanks for clearing up some of the techno-mumble jumbo from that review. I do have a personal opinion to add here. Most audiophile set-ups that I have seen tend to have the monoblocks set-up right next to the speakers. Of course, this has just been for stereo systems and not surround systems as it makes both runs about equi-distant. Bringing monoblocks for use as surround channel amps does raise some more questions such as the one by audvid that started this post.

Just a quick "what if?" question. What if the M-200s had a balanced input? Would that change your answer?

Balanced lines would certainly equalize the situation, but I think that unless the run was very long, I'd still use longer speaker leads. Of course, if the speakers had very low impedances, that would shift the situation in favor of long interconnects. I have always used bi-amping with speakers without passive crossovers, so this is something I've not had to really think about since the speaker is directly connected to it's power amp. I certainly would not use balanced lines just so that I could run a long interconnect verses speaker lead. Remember that in most instances, there is added circuitry that "balances" the signal, and this added electronics is just more to comprimise the sound.

There is one very good reason that you see a lot of power amps next to the speakers: It looks impressive!. I think this is somewhat of an "audiophile convention".

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The Soundhound Theater


[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited February 18, 2003).]

Well I seem to be the odd man out again. My system has 40' (yes that feet) interconnects on the mains and 40' speaker cable to the center. The IC's are Canare wire with Canare RCA interconnects. The speaker wire is 11 gauge (actually a quad cable with two wires on the + and -) Canare. Absolutely minimal interference on the mains, only a slight hiss if you put your ear up to the tweeters (Polk SDA 1-c's), and a slightly louder hiss on the center (Polk CS-400). In my system it doesn't seem to matter, but I also spent about a month a year ago making sure I got rid of all ground loops (including satellite and antenna) and ridding the immediate area of all EMI/RFI sources I could think of. YMMV.

[This message has been edited by morphsci (edited February 18, 2003).]

Well, I'm hooking up my 950 to Mackie powered monitors with long interconnects from WickedCables.com. The owner, Pat is making me RCA males to 1/4" phone plugs interconnects which is what I need to do the (unfortunately) unbalanced run. Too bad the 950 doesn't have xlr outs...

Jay