Phono cable advice.

Wow-tough crowd here! It’s getting a bit nasty.

I may as well throw in a few comments.

Firstly, Dopogue is absolutely right about cable burn in, especially on phono cable which is subjected to such a small signal under normal circumstances that it may never fully break in. Which is why I strongly recommended anyone purchasing the Audio Sensibility cable earlier in the thread pay the extra few bucks for the optional burn in.

For the past 10-15 years every piece of cabling in my system has been cyrogenically treated and then burned in either on the Nordost cooker or the Audiodharma including all 4 phono cables that I’ve used over the years. Both Steve at Audio Sensibility and Gene at Takefiveaudio (who built a custom phono cable for me years ago with Cardas wire) use the Audiodharma.

Secondly, the Jelco phono cable (at least the Jelco 506 balanced/XLR version I used) is not poorly constructed, nor does it sound like junk. Is there better out there? I’m sure there is. For the price, though, I think it is a good, very high value cable which bettered both the Cardas wire/Din/Vampire XLR cable which Gene constructed for me and Van den Hul 502, which I believe is the stock cable included with the upper end SME tonearms and retails for around $450.

In my opinion, the Audio Sensibility Impact SE copper cable easily bested all of these though as I said earlier, and not by insignificant margins. For perspective, this is on a Gyrodec with Sumiko FT3/Jelco 750D arms and an AT 33 Mono & Accuphase AC2 cartridges into an Aqvox phono preamp.

Whether the differences would be as pronounced on the OP’s equipment I don’t know, and then subjective listening preferences, as always come into play. I hope the Audio Sensibility works out for him, or the Jelco, even though I consider it to be considerably inferior. And the DH Labs might be interesting as well. I have no experience with DH Labs interconnects but do use their power cabling in my system and it is a very high value cable.

Finally, Mogami (real Mogami-not fake) manufactures a lot of different wire, almost all of it reasonably priced. But there are certainly lower quality lines within Mogami that possibly do not offer much in terms of performance.

Their 3103/3104 speaker cable, for example, is anything but junk. The 3103 outperformed Kimber 8TC in my system at a fraction of the price (about 1/6th of the cost actually) and there are many 3103/3104 users that have compared it to much more expensive offerings and are using it in moderate to high end systems with very good results.

Finally, if the OP is indeed using wireless speakers and the signal is ultimately being digitised, it would seem to be self-defeating in terms of investing a lot of time and effort into an analog front end. 

@soundermn What facts do you seek? The fact that a small signal cable has no shield is all that’s needed to question intelligence. 

not biting, mr. troll.

@soundermn

In my case, I would need a tuner to hear the radio... my cables don’t receive FM broadcasts, as you so arrogantly insist they do. Several people here, including industry experts are saying phono cables don’t need to be shielded in most (not all) cases.

Ok, forget about radio, but for the rest of the statement, especially using ART-9, it’s nothing but a miracle. Alleluia!

But i don’t believe in miracles, the majority of the cables for a phono application are in fact shielded. There is a difference between interconnects and phono cables, no doubt. Swaping phono and interconnect (even from the same manufacturer) between tonearm and phonostage is not in favor of unshielded cables. This is my experience, but you may like unshielded for whatever reason. So your cable is just what we call "interconnect" ? I can reverse a question and ask you what is a disadvantages of the shielded phono cable in your opinion ?

I will simply quote a trusted expert for an example, Chakster.

atmasphere6,625 posts10-16-2018 3:08pm


A further advantage is that unshielded cables have lower capacitance per foot, which is really helpful when dealing with the resonance that develops due to the cartridge inductance and the cable capacitance.

So, the disadvantage would be the converse of what he says. Potentially higher capacitance, for example.

However, you miss my point. My point was that you and Invictus are making these blanket statements as if they are facts, and absolutes. Nobody is "unintelligent" for using something that works. There are NO absolutes in this hobby. You are misdirecting the OP by providing your opinion as if it is fact. It may be fact in SOME situations... but not in others.

And, the fact that it works for me isn't any kind of miracle.  As stated by Atmasphere and others in this thread, there are some situations where a shielded phono cable is not as good as an unshielded one.