How to connect the Cambridge Audio MXN10 to the Rotel A8 and Q Acoustics 3030c

What you need

Already have

Nothingno signal cable comes in any of the three boxes

Need to buy

Stereo RCA interconnectMXN10 to A8

Speaker cablesone pair, equal lengths

For the interconnect, measure the gap between the two boxes on the rack and add enough that you can pull either one forward to reach behind it. Rotel's own instruction on layout is worth following while you are down there: keep the power cords away from the audio cables rather than running them alongside each other, which is the cheapest noise reduction available to anybody.

Work out where the speakers are going before you measure the speaker cable. Q Acoustics ask for at least 0.2m of free space behind a 3030c, because the cabinet is rear ported, and the closer it sits to the wall the more the bass is reinforced until it overwhelms everything else. If the room gives you no choice, the foam bungs in the box go into the ports: the level of bass drops and, in Q Acoustics' words, its extension and definition increase. A 3030c is happiest on a stand, and a stand-mounted speaker is treated like a floorstander except that it can sit a little closer to the back wall.

Then measure the route the cable will actually take, which is normally around the edge of the room rather than across the middle of the floor, take the longer of the two sides, allow some slack, and buy a pair at that length. Q Acoustics are blunt about two things here. Thin cable reduces the bass and restricts the dynamic range, and you never join two lengths together to make one long enough.

Connecting it

1. Fit both aerials to the MXN10 and check they are screwed down. Cambridge Audio ask for that before use, and one of the two is doing Bluetooth while the other is doing Wi-Fi.
2. Turn everything in the system off before you touch a speaker terminal. Rotel say so plainly, and it is the one instruction on this page that protects the amplifier rather than the sound.
3. Prepare the speaker cable the way Q Acoustics describe it, which is more precise than most people bother with and takes a minute. Split the twin cable back about 40mm. Bare the wire to a depth of 10mm and twist each end to gather the stray strands. Then crop it back so 7mm of bare wire is left showing.
4. At the speaker, unscrew the terminal anticlockwise until you can see the hole through the base of the terminal column, push the bare end in, and screw it back down fully hand tight.
5. At the Rotel, unscrew the binding post thumbscrew anticlockwise, put the wire or the spade around the post shaft, and turn the thumbscrew clockwise until it clamps. The A8's terminals also take dual banana plugs if your cable is already terminated.
6. Right channel to the right speaker, left to left, red to red and black to black at both ends.
7. Run the interconnect from the MXN10's line output to CD, Tuner or Aux on the A8. Rotel colour their line inputs the usual way round, white for left and red for right.
8. Get the MXN10 on the network, either with a Category 5 or 5E straight-through Ethernet cable into the router or over Wi-Fi through the StreamMagic app, then plug in the mains, select the input on the A8 with the volume down, and bring it up gradually.

Why there is no DAC decision to make

Most streamer-and-amplifier pages have to work out which of the two boxes should turn the digital signal into an analogue one, because both of them can. Here only one can. The A8 has a moving-magnet phono input, a ground terminal and three line inputs, and that is the whole of its input list: no coaxial, no optical, no USB, no HDMI.

So the MXN10's coaxial and optical outputs, which exist and work, have nothing on the A8 to plug into. The connection is the analogue one, out of the line output, and the MXN10 has already done the conversion by the time the signal reaches the RCA plugs. If you later add a CD transport or want to run a television into this system, that is the moment a separate DAC becomes a real question, and not before.

The input you are not using yet

The A8 has a moving-magnet phono input with an earth screw beside it, which is the thing that makes it worth more than its price suggests to somebody with records. Adding a turntable later needs no new box: the deck's own phono lead goes to the phono input rather than to a line one, its earth wire goes to the screw terminal to the left of those sockets, and Rotel note that the earth connection is there to help prevent hum and noise rather than for safety.

Two numbers explain why the deck cannot simply use a spare line input instead. The phono input is built for 2.5mV and overloads at 50mV; the line inputs are built for 180mV and take 4V. A cartridge into a line input is far too quiet to be useful, and a line-level source into the phono input is far too loud, which is the direction that does harm.