mcintosh MT10 turntable good or not.

Okay I've got it. Man this thing is like a tank. The box is huge and its heavy too. It isn't plug and play ready though as I thought. I've got some work to do. I've read the manual and they went to great lengths to I think make all adjustments easy and idiot proof, which is huge for me not being the smartest guy and all. I'll get back to ya' soon.

Okay, got one more thing I don't understand. The mcintosh guy emailed me and told me the setting for my project preamp and said it should do just fine. He mentioned using low capacitance cables from the turntable to the preamp. What does this mean and how do you tell a low capacitance cable. I have currently tributarys direct (probably not a great cable, but this is all new to me).

Nordost or any silver cable -- not a big deal at this point. Something for you to look into down the road. I know Nordost advertises their capacitance, I don't know what it does for synergy. More of a selling tool, I've been told.

Okay all a'goners, this table is great. I think I'll start a new thread and explain more but it is absolutely fantastic. I couldn't imagine getting better sound in the price range. The setup is easy. They have obviously gone to great lengths to get this idiot proof. They must've done all these test and come up with the perfect setup for this table. The detail in setup is amazing and I don't think it is possible to mess it up unless you can't read or don't have fingers or something. You don't need any special tools, it all comes with the table, no special disc or meters just follow the instructions. I played about 5 or 6 albums and the sound stage and imaging was amazing as well as the realism. I don't have the best system (B&W 804N, CJ PV14L, CJ MF2250, AND ALL CABLES AND INTERCONNECTS ARE TRIBUTARIES DIRECT) I have a rotel Cd payer the newest one, and a marantz SACD player. Before this table I wanted to upgrade amps and speakers to fill in the large room I'm in. Now with the sound coming out of my speakers with this mcintosh MT10 turntable, I now know my first order of priority is to upgrade my other source components and the amp and speakers can wait. This is a huge step for me as I didn't see that as being so important before but after one listening session, I now know it is. I highly reccomend the table and my thanks goes out to mcintosh for designing a table that is so easy to set-up for optimum performance.
thanks for all the advice here

Cables have 3 basic specifications--resistance, inductance, and capacitance, or R-L-C. Capacitance is measured in farads, or in the case of interconnects, picoFarads (pF). High capacitance rolls off the treble and slows down the rise time. The signal coming off a tonearm is rather fragile and easily darkened by too much capacitance.

Generally, you'll want the total capacitance of the interconnect from the tonearm to the preamp to be around 100 pF or less. Some cable companies publish capacitance figures and some don't. Sometimes you can pick up the figure when a reviewer tests them. I remember around 15 years ago that the Audioquest Emerald interconnect had vanishingly low capacitance.

Kimber cable interconnects have pretty low capacitance. They rate their Timbre interconnect at 45.8 pF, I think, for 1 meter.

Nordost often has *really* low capacitance. Their Solar Wind interconnect is rated at a very low 7.6 pF/foot. Their highest price stuff is around 20 pF/foot.

Cardas Audio also publishes their RLC specs. Cardas 300B is 42.9 pF/foot; Cardas Cross is 26.4 pf/foot (just about right), and their more upscale Neutral Reference is 19 pf/foot. They also make an entire line of DIN-plug phono cables.