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Why is the standard tonearm cable not good enough?

I just bought a Basis turntable with the Graham Robin arm and the Benz Micro L2. The arm comes with its own interconnect cable to the phono preamp. My dealer urges the purchase of a "high end" cable, which has to be connected to the separate box (with its own thin cable and plug to the tonearm) that is the Graham interface between the plug from the Graham arm and the RCA plug of the "high end" cable. Why is this necessary? Isn't the extra connection and box detrimental to the signal? Shouldn't (and doesn't) Graham supply the most appropriate interconnect cable with its arm?
kocsis
tok20000's avatar
tok20000
608 posts
 
Tim,

I am a vinyl newbie, and I was under the impression that the RB1000 tone arm had no breaks in the cable. I might be wrong, you may be right, but I am not 100% sure either way.

I was assuming (there I go doing the ASS U ME thing) that since the RB1000 did not have a phono box that it plugged into that the cable in the arm was continuous with no breaks.

One thing: Rega's website does not address this issue at all. They do say this about the RB1000: 'Do not try to rewire this arm.'

Anyone else shed some light on this?

KF
tacs
220 posts
 
If you listen to Naim, all line level signals and especially lower level signals should really be going through DIN connectors, which they use, since RCA plugs, no matter how good the cable, tend to reflect signal back and forth and cause smearing. I don't know whether this is true or important, but it's at least possible.
Trouble is, you'd have to get a NAIM setup to get the DINs (of course).
Unless you are unhappy with the sound, buy more records instead. The tonearm cable will make only very subtle differences, and not necessarily for the better.
pbb
1,140 posts
 
Boy I love to hear the sweet sound of "buy more records instead"! How much anxiety can be injected into listening to music? To fret over whether one of the better tone arms available can be made better with a new cable is JPN. Relax listen to the tunes. From the mid-fi trenches, good day.
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