Long XLR's: PAD Venustas versus Mogami

Al, thank you for the advice. I thought the thing Mogami had going for it was low capacitance. As you mentioned, it doesn't seem easy to find the capacitance of the PAD.

At the moment I'm not using the REX, I'm using my Joule LA-150 SE preamp. It has an impedence switch inside to handle longer runs but I haven't switched it (at least not yet) because I am going out from that into a Rives PARC (which is balanced) and from the PARC I'm using a 40' run to the amps. What I don't know (and maybe you can shed some light on it) is what matters more in this situation - the output impedence of the PARC or the Joule.

Nsgarch: my system page isn't up to date (and the Atma-sphere amps in the photo were borrowed at the time).

I'm not currently using my Lamm M1.2 Ref amps nor the BAT REX. In trying to clean up glare from my Sashas I found I got less distortion from my Joule LA-150 SE and Spectron Musician III (bybees/v-caps) amps.

Speaker position is also slightly closer to the back wall. Yes, I use casters, but I'm unconvinced that spikes will make that much of an improvement since my carpet is thick shag with thick underpadding and I feel the speakers don't budge.

But I guess I should try putting the spikes in and see for myself. I really appreciate your comments. I'm realizing as I write this that I have spoken with Jim Aud once - I run my Spectron amps as monoblocks and this requires a Y-cable configuration and Spectron sent me to Jim to order a pair of Y-XLR's. He was very easy to speak to. Gee I wonder what 'model' cable he would have used.

My Spectrons are supposedly very senstive to Power cords and I'm using Panagea AC-9's. Maybe I should try PAD PCs as well?

Dan,

Thanks for responding. Along with trying the PAD speaker cable I have a friend's MIT Oracle 2.2's and the bass *is* faster than the PADs. It is also a bit more open sounding, but I love the PAD's midrange.

I spiked my speakers the other night to see what I was missing. I first tried it with the lowest setting but it produced way too much bass. Wilson provides spacers for this type of situation and so my next attempt was with both spacers (equaling the height of the casters).

With this I didn't hear much difference from the casters, but I did *feel* the bass more (concrete floor for what it's worth).

So capacitance is the main parameter to consider for longer runs (where the lower the better)?