Long interconnects

joralieu · 5619

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Offline joralieu

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on: July 01, 2023, 07:08:53 AM
Would the Moreplay have a problem driving 25' interconnects?



Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #1 on: July 01, 2023, 07:32:50 AM
How much capacitance per foot are those cables?  How much capacitance is there at the load?

Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man


Offline joralieu

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Reply #2 on: July 01, 2023, 07:58:18 AM
Haven't built the cables yet, trying to decide wether to run long interconnects or long speaker cables.



Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #3 on: July 01, 2023, 09:41:01 AM
How about the input capacitance of the amplifier?

Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man


Offline joralieu

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Reply #4 on: July 01, 2023, 10:07:51 AM
I have a SEX and and a Declare SE84UFO25. Don't have the numbers here now.



Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #5 on: July 01, 2023, 10:49:49 AM
OK, none of these are super high Miller capacitance.  If you had something with a 12AX7 or a 6SL7 as the first gain stage, then there would definitely be issues. 

If you used something like Blue Jeans LC-1 cable, you're likely looking at being -3dB at about 140kHz under the worst conditions, so you'd expect a little bit of very slow roll-off to start around 14kHz, and that isn't going to be particularly consequential.

This arrangement can go sideways quickly if you use a higher capacitance cable or an amplifier with a lot of Miller capacitance, so do keep that in mind. 

Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man


Offline joralieu

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Reply #6 on: July 01, 2023, 11:59:45 AM
Ok, thanks for the info. I could go either way, long interconnects and short speaker cables or short interconnects and long speaker cables. What are the pros and cons of either way?



Offline Paul Birkeland

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Reply #7 on: July 01, 2023, 12:34:38 PM
There are a whole ton of recommendations online that if you just used balanced cables that none of this is a problem, but rarely do those making this recommendation make any mention of cable capacitance.  Generally the argument is that balanced cables are more immune to picking up noise (true), but this notion is rarely quantified in any meaningful way.  To put it another way, it's extremely rare to have noise issues from unbalanced interconnects resolved by using balanced ones in the setting of a typical home audio system.

For zero feedback SET amps with relatively high output impedances, the negative consequences of longer speaker cables are a bit diminished.  Still, it's a worthwhile experiment to buy an inexpensive 25 foot and 3 foot set of interconnects from the same manufacturer, then the same for speaker cable (just cut some off a roll perhaps), then you can listen for the differences in your system.  The cheap-o cable is likely to have a lot of capacitance, so it should make the HF issues much more apparent.

Paul "PB" Birkeland

Bottlehead Grunt & The Repro Man