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Signal cables near power cables

Hippocamp

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I'm setting up powered speakers. The input is from a balanced DAC connected to the speakers via balanced star-quad cables. Do I need to take care to physically separate the power cables to the monitors from these signal cables? Would the answer be different if the cables were unbalanced RCA?
 
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DVDdoug

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Don't worry about it but it would be "bad practice" to bundle or zip-tie them tightly together, or to run them in the same conduit. If there was a problem you'd hear AC hum when the cables are close and it would go-away when they are separated.

Balanced connections are highly-immune to this kind of noise pick-up/interference, and they are also highly-immune to ground-loop hum, which is a more common issue.

Normal RCA audio cables are shielded (as are balanced cables) and line-outputs are low-impedance (as are balanced outputs) and both of those things help to minimize noise pick-up. The input is high-impedance so there is more chance of noise if the other end isn't plugged-into anything. Unbalanced connections are more sensitive to ground loop noise and if you get hum it's usually a ground loop.

If you have a turntable, the cables are also shielded but the phono cartridge is higher impedance which makes it more sensitive to noise, it also has a coil which is "good" for picking-up hum (but it is shielded too), and then the weak signal (and any noise) is amplified by about 1000 so the wires from a turntable should be more-carefully separated from power cables.
 

Speedskater

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Actually you can bundle them together. 'jneutron' a wire expert at a major research lab, sometimes writes about this in different audio forums.
This is from when he was a week-end DJ.

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Lambda

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Do I need to take care to physically separate the power cables to the monitors from these signal cables? Would the answer be different if the cables were unbalanced RCA?
No. keep them close together to keep the ground loop area small.
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To some counterintuitive. The bigger the loop area the more magnetic magnetic fields get piked up.
so for Ground loops. its better to neatly pack cables together

Shielded cables easily take care of capacitive coupling between the cables.

As always it depends. but ts not in general a bad idea.
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