Proper Cable Placement.

Just drape them neatly without any added tension other than their natural weight. Also, keep them from touching each other, other cabling or the corners/edges or the equipment rack.

For interconnects, I have been using one or two small pieces of styrofoam to keep the cables separated. This works well. Does anyone have comments or suggestions on this?

JD

I use reusable cable ties from RadioSnack and tie them to the rack so they don't touch powercords and possibly away from each other if applicable.

The best material/product to use is ceramic cable towers in the case of keeping audio cables off the floor/carpet. Those made by Rightway Audio are the best IMO. Getting and keeping cables off the floor/carpet creates a tremendous improvement in music dynamics, detail and dynamic range. What you are essentially doing is reducing the capacitance to ground and increasing the resistance to ground by elevating the cables off the floor. As a result, you are getting less signal "drainage" to the carpet; thus more signal gets to the loudspeaker or amp on time and intact. There is more to this simple discussion than what I attempted to summarize above.

What about power cords, should they be elevated off the floor/carpet as well or doesn't matter?

Keeping power cords (and power filters) free from any kind of vibration, as may be induced by the floor, will make a huge difference. Try it out.

I bought some of the wire clamps from Pure Note to keep my cables apart. They sell 5/16" and 3/8" diameters. See their speaker cables to get an idea what they look like:
http://www.purenote.com/speakercables.htm

Eric what was your perception of cable performance using the Pure Note wire clamps. ?

I don't think I've ever heard the interconnects affecting each other.

Two things I do hear a difference, first of which, is when separating the red and black sections of speaker cables and separating digital and analog cables. To separate the red and black sections of the speaker cable, you just have to use separate runs of cables. If you are bi-wiring, use a single stereo channel for both the hot and another set of cable for the neutral. This greatly adds more coherency and smoothness in my system. I don't have this set up now since my new speakers have a twisted pair of CAT5 both internally and externally. I might upgrade to separate runs of OTA cables. The other thing I can hear a difference in is separate all cables that are analog and digital related meaning the powercables and interconnects. This is not as perceivable and might just be my brain doing tricks on me.

Darrylhifi:

I also use the Pure Note clamps and they do not alter the sound in any way. They are simply a wire management device to keep the cables neat and away from other cables like power cords.

I really don't know diddly about interconnects touching and AC cords. I run my AC cords along one side and my interconnects around the other. I did have to run an interconnect beneath a huge speaker (electrostatic) where i read in another line that I should buy a piece of foam insullation used to insulate pipes coming from hot water heaters so it won't lay on the floor. The stuff is dirt-cheap. If you wnat to do something, go on down to an Ace hardware store and stock up on a bunch of these. They cost nothing and you might feel better.......

Darryl,

Thanks for posting this thread i tried all the
instructions,IT WORKS.
JC