Which is the most important interconnect?

[The Black Adder]

Hi all.

Just having a little re-shuffle with leads IC's here and had this thought. Of course he answer to this thread is bound to be 'all of them' but if you were to choose an interconnect to swap with a different type (for example) which one of these would you choose?

Source to preamp? or Preamp to amplifier?

Cheers

[The Barbarian]

Personally i would go for the source to pre interconnect..

[The Grand Wazoo]

How many sources?
If only one, then I think I'd go for that connection. If more than one, then I'd expect the pre to power one would be the best bet.

[jandl100]

Yep, both of them matter equally, I think - but I'd be interested to hear your findings if you did the experiment. :)

[Jimbo]

Source to pre makes the biggest difference.

[MartinT]

Any bottleneck anywhere will limit your reproduction. However, I have found that small signal interconnects make the biggest difference. The tonearm cable is the most sensitive, then source to preamp followed by preamp to power amp. If you can, use XLR balanced connections wherever possible.

[The Black Adder]

Thanks guys.

It was just a little thing Ii thought about... upgrading some IC's soon.

I'll keep this thread going to put in my findings.

I have to agree Martin, I do love balanced stuff as I remember the difference between unbalanced and Balanced with my Chord setup, the difference was noticeable.

Unfortunately all of my kit is unbalanced now.

[MikeMusic]

I assume the front end like others here

but

I put some Kimber KCAG interconnects between my Naim HiCap and Naim 135s and the difference was amazing. No need to swap back to compare. Twas a monster difference
Same between twin HiCaps and a Naim 500

[potatoha]

To me source to pre is more important. However, if you have multiple sources, then pre-power is equally important as a weak link in there will homogenise the sound of different sounding sources.

[agk]

I guess that saying 'garbage in, garbage out' would have some bearing on the matter but then as with all of this stuff it comes down to your ears again.

[The Barbarian]

I dont understand why Pre/pwr is the preference over the Source. If you are not getting the last bit of information from the source it can never be gotten by changing the Pre-power lead.. If an improvement does appear then swap out the pre/pwr cos you know the improvement from your source lead is bound to be an improvement over the one you presently use on pre/pwr..

Hope you got that :lol:

[Rush2112]

Well I would agree with the general consensus that goes before. Garbage in garbage out springs to mind ! Source first then pre to power etc . Without doubt the turntable will benefit from upgraded cable if that's possible too. There's also an element of "matching" not all cables sound the same! So what might enhance one source might over emphasise another so the bottom line is give it a try. I prefer leaving the cable in place for a few days rather than swapping from one to another between tracks discs etc., using a selection of discs that you know well.