Where the hells me wires go!!

Posted by: Matt worlock on 15 October 2001

Does this trouble you?

The subject of cable position (speaker cable,interconnects, power leads etc.) in relation to each other is a little bit fustrating to me. When I take a look behind my hifi support there are a lot of cables back there & there all in a bit of a mess really.

Now many poeple have mentioned things like you must not allow cables to run parallel with each other, that the mains socket should be at least 2 feet distance from the kit, speaker cable must not be ran along side or under radiators, mains power leads must clear from signal cable ie interconnects,speaker wire.

To me it seems to be virtually impossible to avoid these so called sonic pitfalls where if one cable gets a slight whiff of another your chances of obtaining good music are trashed!

I'm wondering how exactly this placement problem degrades the sound?

Cheers for now Mad boy Matt

Posted on: 15 October 2001 by Jez Quigley

Take Tom's advice. Trying to get all the cables plugged in the right order without crossing touching each other or the shelf or the signal leads or the speaker leads and not near sockets or radiators etc etc leads to madness, and makes **** all difference anyway.

Posted on: 15 October 2001 by Andrew L. Weekes

I gave up fiddling with cable positions ages ago, except on items where there are obvious, clearly audible improvements to be had.

With most items the differences are subtle, but there are much larger gains to be had elsewhere, and just a dirty mains connector or similar degrades performance much more than cable dressing, in my experience.

Exceptions to this are things like the Prefix. Moving the cable around with the volume up can have clearly audible effects on noise or hum levels - positioning the cable for minimum hum / noise makes a big difference.

Of course sensitivity to these issue may be dependant upon system level / resolution.

Tom's advice is the best - open the wine, and I'd turn out the lights too.

It'll make a bigger difference!

Andy.