I'm looking for good analog interconnects

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Much appreciated. Al, I have an Ortofon Magic 3 (made for Music Hall) cartridge. I've set the gain on the Phonomena II+to 44dB for the modest gain of the Magic 3 at 3 mV. I'm not sure what I ought to be looking for or comparing when considering the interconnects between the TT and phono stage. Please let me know what I should be considering. Thank you. I was considering an Acoustic Zen cable and will look into the DBS cables as well. Regards, Pete

Pete, I found specs in several places indicating that the recommended load capacitance for your cartridge, which is a moving magnet type and is therefore considerably more sensitive to load capacitance than other types, is 150 to 200 pf. I also found an indication that the capacitance of your King Cobra cable is 110 pf/meter, or about 33.5 pf/foot, although that is not necessarily definitive, as it was provided by a user in a forum post. Also, as I mentioned, unfortunately the input capacitance of your phono stage doesn't appear to be specified.

My guess, though, is that if your present King Cobra cable is the same 0.5 meter length that you want for its replacement, the total load capacitance that is presently being presented to the cartridge (by the turntable's internal wiring + the phono cable + the phono stage input) is in the right area. However, if the King Cobra cable is a more typical length, such as 4 or 5 feet, I suspect that the total capacitance being presented to the cartridge is likely to be significantly greater than the recommended maximum of 200 pf, and would therefore probably be contributing to brightness significantly.

In the latter case, just going to a shorter length such as 0.5 meters, even with the same cable type, is likely to help. And even more so if the cable has significantly lower capacitance per unit length, say 10 to 20 pf/foot. However if the King Cobra you are presently using is only 0.5 meters, then capacitance is probably not involved in the issue.

Regards,
-- Al

For a cheap and in my eyes (ears) very competent interconnect I recommend the van den Hul D102 MkIII.

I've owned one for years and always compared it to all much more expensive ic's when my cable experiment grew out of hand and never found a cable that really trounced it.
At least not in all areas and overall presentation.

It is an all round pleasing cable that in no case sounded bright, yet revealed pleasingly and had nice extension on the bottom.
It sacrifices maybe a tiny bit of definition for smoothness which serves music well in a lot of cases.
But this is only noticeable when you compare it with cables that excel in that point and are in many cases more or even a lot more expensive.

Somewhat above this price range of the brands mentioned above I had Audioquest Jaguar and Acoustic Zen Matrix II at one time, neither bettered the van den Hul in my system at the time in overall performance, the Audioquest was if I remember correctly a little more transparent than the other two but less natural in the highs than the vd Hul.

I also have the Pure Note Cables in one of my house systems and agree about the clarity. The closest cable sonically that compares to the Pure Note is Cabledyne Reference Coppers. The build quality is higher and they have the similar clarity.

Al, thank you for the homework on the capacitance. Much appreciated. I am using a 0.5 meter cable so the capacitance issue should not be a factor. Thanks Barto and SG for the recommendations. I will take a look at those options as well. Again thank you.