Avalon Acoustics Sentinel - Manual (Page 25)

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4.1 Wiring and Field Interactions
The Sentinel Active Reference System is an extremely revealing, high-energy
device. Therefore, it is important to carefully plan the placement and routing
of wires when setting up your music reproduction system. Wiring is a task that
is often performed in a quick and haphazard manner, driven by the
excitement and anticipation of listening to one's brand new system. Although
it is compelling to rush into this process, don't rush!
Inductive field effects
The wiring in your music reproduction system is a very sensitive network of
electromagnetic conductors. Any changing magnetic fields that are in close
proximity to those conductors will induce small contaminating signals, thereby
degrading the music fidelity. In addition, the magnetic fields generated by
signals passing through one conductor will induce similar contaminating
signals in any adjacent conductors. These cross-inductive effects in a poorly
laid-out conductor network substantially increase the system noise floor,
resulting in a lack of image focus and resolution. In severe cases, oscillative
phenomena may also have disastrous effects on wide bandwidth amplifiers.
The following guidelines will minimize inductive field effects in your system:
•
Physically separate the conductors whenever possible, as cross-
inductive effects decrease with the square of the distance between
elements. This applies to speaker cable, interconnects, digital cables,
and any AC cables in your system.
•
When crossing of wires is unavoidable, cross them at right angles to
one another, and place non-conductive spacers between them.
•
Avoid placing magnetic field devices near the conductors. Devices
such as halogen lights, fluorescent lights, dimmer switches, terminator
boxes, or computer equipment should not be placed in the vicinity of
the wiring or crossovers.