These experiments are not so easy to do! Mainly because moving multicomponent audio racks around is not easy but also because I have to change several things at once to accommodate different positions. Which rather complicates the comparisons for sound quality.
For the last year or so I have had my main rack (a 42 inch tall salamander synergy with a bunch of added damping) off to the side of my room, parallel to my listening position at about the 2/3 mark -- i.e. 2/3 of the way from the front wall to the back. (The room over all is 12 x 23 feet, and the speakers are about 5 feet out from one of the shorter walls. I have bass traps in the front corners and absorption on the side walls and ceiling, maybe more than I really need.) With the cables I had on hand (all shorter than 3 meters) I had to run the speaker cables straight to the speakers across the floor in front of the speakers and put my PS Audio M700 amps in between the rack and the speakers -- a kludgy stopgap. Recently I acquired a 25 foot set of balanced interconnects from Benchmark (i.e., just ’studio quality’ not audiophile) and moved the amps to the often-recommended position just behind the speakers. But then their power cords would not reach the power conditioner in my rack so I had to run a 25 foot, 12 gauge extension cord from the rack to the amps as well. And then I remembered that my speakers (Alta Audio Rhea’s) have a rear port near floor level that was blowing straight onto the amps. So that was three things that changed at once: amp position near speaker-port, long pro-grade interconnect, and extension cord for the power amps. And it did not sound as good as before. (Collapsed soundstage, more congested overall sound.) But why?
After fiddling around for several days of trying various combinations of cabling and amp locations, I never got it to sound as good as before.
So I moved the rack to the front wall between and behind the speakers and was able to dispense with all the long cables. Better! But I think not as good as before. And I’m still not sure which factor is the key. Is it the rack behind the speakers? Is it the amps on the floor near the speakers? (One more variable. In the side-wall position the amps were sitting on bamboo cutting boards on top of Herbie’s tender-feet on top of the concrete slab. To get them near the speakers I needed to put them on the area rug that occupies most of the listening area. So they are on the boards on the rug -- no tender-feet.. I guess that means 4 things changed not 3.)
And, of course, one of the main points of moving the amps near the speakers was to be able to use short speaker cables. So I got a 4 foot set of Kimber 8TC. These were not an improvement over my previous cables (10 foot Morrow SP3). Would shorter be better?
At any rate, I am now back to all the same cables I started with, the rack is on the front wall, and I can’t really be sure whether or not the system sounds significantly different than it did when the rack was on the side wall, and if so, why. But it sounds OK. So I think I’ll leave it where it is for now. And try some other short speaker cables. But I’m starting to think I should have just left everything where it was, gotten some longer speaker cables, and called it good enough.
For the last year or so I have had my main rack (a 42 inch tall salamander synergy with a bunch of added damping) off to the side of my room, parallel to my listening position at about the 2/3 mark -- i.e. 2/3 of the way from the front wall to the back. (The room over all is 12 x 23 feet, and the speakers are about 5 feet out from one of the shorter walls. I have bass traps in the front corners and absorption on the side walls and ceiling, maybe more than I really need.) With the cables I had on hand (all shorter than 3 meters) I had to run the speaker cables straight to the speakers across the floor in front of the speakers and put my PS Audio M700 amps in between the rack and the speakers -- a kludgy stopgap. Recently I acquired a 25 foot set of balanced interconnects from Benchmark (i.e., just ’studio quality’ not audiophile) and moved the amps to the often-recommended position just behind the speakers. But then their power cords would not reach the power conditioner in my rack so I had to run a 25 foot, 12 gauge extension cord from the rack to the amps as well. And then I remembered that my speakers (Alta Audio Rhea’s) have a rear port near floor level that was blowing straight onto the amps. So that was three things that changed at once: amp position near speaker-port, long pro-grade interconnect, and extension cord for the power amps. And it did not sound as good as before. (Collapsed soundstage, more congested overall sound.) But why?
After fiddling around for several days of trying various combinations of cabling and amp locations, I never got it to sound as good as before.
So I moved the rack to the front wall between and behind the speakers and was able to dispense with all the long cables. Better! But I think not as good as before. And I’m still not sure which factor is the key. Is it the rack behind the speakers? Is it the amps on the floor near the speakers? (One more variable. In the side-wall position the amps were sitting on bamboo cutting boards on top of Herbie’s tender-feet on top of the concrete slab. To get them near the speakers I needed to put them on the area rug that occupies most of the listening area. So they are on the boards on the rug -- no tender-feet.. I guess that means 4 things changed not 3.)
And, of course, one of the main points of moving the amps near the speakers was to be able to use short speaker cables. So I got a 4 foot set of Kimber 8TC. These were not an improvement over my previous cables (10 foot Morrow SP3). Would shorter be better?
At any rate, I am now back to all the same cables I started with, the rack is on the front wall, and I can’t really be sure whether or not the system sounds significantly different than it did when the rack was on the side wall, and if so, why. But it sounds OK. So I think I’ll leave it where it is for now. And try some other short speaker cables. But I’m starting to think I should have just left everything where it was, gotten some longer speaker cables, and called it good enough.