Long cables from turntable or phono stage

Dear Ninox: IMHO always that's posible we want to connect the cartridge signal coming from the tonearm/TT as shortest is posible to the phono/preamp stages.

The cartridge signal is extremely delicate and sensitive due to its very low output and as more lenght it has to run as more degradation happen. In the other side a longer IC cable means higher capacitance that affect the quality performance of your ADC cartridge.

Now, the output impedance of your Moon 110LP is low enough ( 50 ohms. ) for you can run long cables to the amp with out trouble.

Regards and enjoy the music,
R.

I agree with all the opinions expresses so far. I have my TT far away from the system pre amp as you do. It is acoustically isolated from the loudspeakers.

My only advice is to use an RS meter and find a place with the least bass nodes and to use shielded ICs from the phono preamp to the system preamp. I use Blue Jeans cables LC-1 which is very low capacitance and is double shielded to eliminate outside interference. It has very solid crimped connectors and is well made.

Thanks everyone, that's really helpful.

connect turntable to phonostage with 1m long IC cable regardless weather you're using balanced or unbalanced arm wires. that's how all of the sound pickups designed to synergise with the cartridge inductive load and best pickup performance. per-meter active resistance of tonearm wire does a trick of increasing detail performance of cartridge. length of phono to preamp cable is less of importance, but shorter ones may give more benefits depending on your rest of equipment. tru differentially balanced stages pretty much don't care of the output wire length at all.

OK- I am going to be the lone voice here. Most LOMC cartridge don't make much voltage but they do make a surprising amount of current, otherwise you could not load them at 50 or 100 ohms and get away with it.

So I am asking here that you all think about that simple fact.

What this means is that the cartridge and cable is a fairly low impedance system, and the length of the cable is thus not nearly as problematic as suggested above. What the real problem is: the cartridge has an inductance and the cable has a capacitance. This will not cause problems at audio frequencies, but will cause issues at Radio Frequencies.

This is true even if the cable is only one meter BTW.

So what you **may** have to do is adjust the loading resistor, should it be the case that your preamp cares about RF coming into its phono input (some preamps, particularly solid state preamps, don't like RF at their inputs and this can really affect the sound).

Bottom line: you can very successfully run a 4 meter interconnect. You may experience some artifact from the cable, but if you run it balanced you can eliminate that.

Now if you are using a high output moving magnet, then its a different deal and you will find that because its impedance is higher, it is also more sensitive to the cable.