Lots of debate about this, my preference is for long shielded IC's and short lengths of speaker wire
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Which cable should take the long run?
My sub will be about 25 feet from my gear. So should I keep the amp in the rack and run a long speaker cable to the sub or run a long signal cable to the sub and short speaker cable? Maybe it doesn't matter which. I don't know.
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Agreed about the debate so I wont get into it, personally I prefer to keep the line level shorter on subs since runs of over 25 feet may cause a tiny amout of delay. Wether it actually hits the 20ms threshold of audiablilty is the real question. if you have the ability to put the amp n the rack that is what I would personally do but....
I'd go with long speaker wire.
Any noise you pick up on the long wire length would be pretty tiny compared to the already-amplified signal (on the speaker line), but if you pick up the same amount of noise on the line BEFORE you amplify, you'll be amplifying the (weak) noise signal also.
That and the speaker wire signal is differential, so the noise you pick up shouldn't matter *in theory*. (I don't know if the line-level signal is differential or not.)
I don't think delay would matter, because you'd have the same delay either way. The electrons would go at the same speed in both wires - and it wouldn't be significant anyway b/c it's about the same as the speed of light. The distance from sub to listener is important in short (25 ft) distances because a sound wave through air is MUCH slower.
Any noise you pick up on the long wire length would be pretty tiny compared to the already-amplified signal (on the speaker line), but if you pick up the same amount of noise on the line BEFORE you amplify, you'll be amplifying the (weak) noise signal also.
That and the speaker wire signal is differential, so the noise you pick up shouldn't matter *in theory*. (I don't know if the line-level signal is differential or not.)
I don't think delay would matter, because you'd have the same delay either way. The electrons would go at the same speed in both wires - and it wouldn't be significant anyway b/c it's about the same as the speed of light. The distance from sub to listener is important in short (25 ft) distances because a sound wave through air is MUCH slower.
I seem to remember reading something about the difference in impedance being the big factor. As in, if you use low-impedance interconnects, it's better to use those for the long runs and use short runs of speaker cable, since speaker cable would have higher impedance. The reasoning being, i assume, that lower impedance leads to less signal loss? Is there any truth to any of that?
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