Turntable Placement Between Speakers with Short Interconnect?

Mijostyn is correct, in my opinion. In these situations you want the shortest ICs between the cartridge and phono, and the longest ICs between the linestage and the amplifier. The amplifier should be situated as close as possible to the speakers, so you can use short speaker cables. That’s the ideal set-up. Since your phono, line, and amplifier are all on one chassis, you’d be best off with the electronics and the TT in between the speakers. At least that allows you to use the shortest possible ICs between TT and phono input, based on your description. But that’s very bad for acoustic feedback possibly affecting your phono signal. There’s no good answer, and even a Minus K is not going to protect the cartridge from airborne acoustic feedback. See what you can find out about the radiation pattern of your B&W speakers. With dipole speakers (which yours are not), your situation would be a little more tenable, since dipoles do not radiate much to the side. Perhaps with knowledge of the radiation pattern of the B&Ws you can locate a space fore or aft of the baffle that is less subject to speaker SPLs. But I would not opt for the choice to put the TT to one side or the other of the speakers, because that apparently would require 8 ft phono cables, a no-no in my book for any purist. And placing everything to one side also will require longer speaker cables, another disadvantage.

long intereconnects arent bad if you use good ones.

however placing any table too close to loudspeakers is much worse

Dave And Troy

Audio intellect nj

I can agree that there is a tradeoff between having the table "too close" to speakers and long ICs, but the quality of the phono ICs makes very little difference if they are 8 feet long, as proposed.  Or to put it a better way, quality per se is not going to make up for the extra long length.  And in this case, having the table to one side or the other of a pair of speakers is not necessarily any better in terms of feedback potential than having it in between the speakers.  We would need to know more about the radiation pattern of the speakers.  Also, given the monetary constraints imposed on himself by the OP, it hardly seems likely he would want to pay for very expensive ICs.

I have done a fair amount of experimenting with stuff in the center between speakers. With dynamic speakers (as opposed to ribbon), you do not want a stack of stuff… it screws up the imaging. I had to locate my equipment off to the side… that and the addition of a thick wool wall hanging (see photos under my UserID)… made a huge performance difference. The soundstage now goes deep into the wall.

Also, you do not want to put long interconnect between the TT and Phonostage. Typically, as mentioned above you break between the preamp and amp. So with no choice… you’ll have to go with long speaker cables. This is hard because: 1) quality matters and 2) good long ones cost a lot of money.

If your floor is concrete locate the TT on a stand… or if it is more convenient or you have suspended floors use a wall shelf.

Thanks again All…. Would this be a possible solution:

I take out the easily removable phono card from my Diablo, and instead purchase an external module to go next to my turntable 3 ft to the right of my right speaker. Then the 8 ft interconnect would be a line level interconnect. That said, I should note that the turntable’s position would be approaching the front right corner of my room, if that is a bad thing…. Unfortunately the layout of my room only allows for these two positions.

That said, lewm notes this may not be any better than in the middle and yes I’d prefer not to have to spend thousands on 8ft interconnects…. Unless there is no other choice.