Avalon Acoustics Sentinel manual Wiring and Field Interactions, Inductive field effects

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.

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