Recommend me a turntable interconnect

Lower isn't always better with capacitance loading, possibly the LC1 wasn't giving your cart enough.

 

I'd also be curious what the VPI cables go for. If they're coming from dealers, I imagine there's some price variance, but what's ballpark?

 

This is a good point and quite frankly, my pea brain never understood cartridge capacitance loading. Is there are calculation or something to ascertain this??

 

http://www.hagtech.com/loading.html

Note, I measured three cables, including your Monster at a meters length and posted cap figures.

 

$299 for 1m

http://www.elusivedisc.com/VPI-JMW-RCA-Phono-Cable-RCA-to-RCA-1-Meter/productinfo/VPI-D1019/

I'm using this for my Scout. I bought it because I thought it made sense to use the same wire that's in the tonearm all the way to the phono preamp and I think it works well. No complaints.

 

I was able to shop around and find them for $199 from Acoustic Sounds. I guess later Acoustic Sounds realized they were the only people selling them for that price and stopped. Kind of a look behind the curtain on cable profit margins I could have done without, but par for the course I guess.

 

I just discovered this.

Like Rolltide, I got mine for $175 from Music Direct. But that was 3-4 years ago, and on the invoice were a Classic2, dustcover, and Dynavector 20x2 cartridge. The cable was the least expensive thing in the package and everything was negotiable that day.

 

The inductance of the cart, capacitance of the cable and the phono stage and resistance of the phono input (and cable) form a resonating circuit with a ringing peak at a certain frequency and a steep roll off of frequencies above that peak. You can use an RLC circuit calculator like this one: http://www.calctool.org/CALC/eng/electronics/RLC_circuit to rough in the frequency of the peak in your set up.

In this kind of circuit the capacitance tunes the frequency at which the resonant peak occurs -- less capacitance pushes the frequency higher, more capacitance pushes the frequency lower. The resistance damps the amplitude of the peak. Ideally for a cart of a given inductance you'll load it with values of C and R that give you flat extension up to 20kHz with the roll off above that. In practice, with MM carts and typical values of C and R in these setups, the peak occurs down in the top octave of the audible range. Ironically, since there's not a lot of musical information going on above 15kHz, more cap and less damped peak in the 10kHz range might sound brighter than less cap and a peak at 15k or 20kHz, where something might sound airier or more open without sounding distinctly brighter. Ideally, if you could push the peak above 20kHz and damp it up there, you'd push not only any frequency anomalies but also any phase shift that accompany the steep roll off after the peak, out above the audible range.

With MC carts, with typically much, much lower inductance than MM carts, the peak is almost always in the ultrasonic range and you need to worry less about cap loading and just proper damping of any ultrasonic ringing.

 

A friend of mine called Rob Fritz at Audio Art cables and had him make up a custom pair for his Basis/Graham 2.2/Benz Glider rig. He loves the cables and they were reasonable priced.

 

One thing is of course that the frequency response is not possible to calculate. But knowing what values we have, capacitance and resistance is a help in adjusting frequency response from measured response, to the the measured response we want.

 

I like that calc, but the damping factor—series and parallel—and the bandwidth are a bit mysterious to me. My resonanct frequency at the standard settings is 3183 kHz, damping factor series .1, damping factor parallel 2.5, bandwidth 636 kHz. Like most MC carts, that puts the resonant frequency up in the inadible area. As I increase the resistance, both damping parallel quickly fall below zero. Is it right to assume that is the electrical damping or supression of action of the cantilever?

 

Rega Couple (2). It's what comes on Rega decks and sounds great.

 

The cantilever has to follow the groove modulations of course, but as I said I don´t think we should trust too much this formula is actually how it works.

 

Simplifying a complex situation for sure, but interesting. To my ears, higher loading allows for slightly higher voltage peaks at hot moments and a more excited sound. That works with the input sensitivity on the amp end, so maybe it is about how much peak gain can be well tollerated in a particular pairing.

 

make your own. just buy some decent cable and interconnects. hifi collective in the UK have some nice cable http://www.hificollective.co.uk/components/interconnect-cable.html

however, it is worth noting that the "best" cable is often not the most expensive or exotic, but the one that suits your system and compensates or reflects the strengths or weaknesses.

 

I can't say myself, but I'd love to know. I think modeling the RLC circuit gives a pretty good rough-in kind of approach to what's going on especially with respect to peak frequency...doesn't account for mechanical resonances

 

I've had a few entry level cables (less than $100) and I've always come back to the Silver Resolution. I have not tried higher priced cables, however.

 

I have not so much ideas, I guess measuring freq response at different velocities is what can be done. The mechanical part of frequency response is of course mechanical, and it´s really difficult to know it´s part of the equation, and will likely be rather different from cantilever to cantilever. Separated from the electrical response, in principle.

 

OK, this is really baffling, but I've had an iPhono for quite some time and was really to the point of being pissed at iFi since it has been a $400 brick almost from the beginning. I could not get it to not hum and make random pops and noise. I had emailed back and forth with iFi and they kept sending me troubleshooting tips. None helped and then they stopped responding when I asked for a warranty replacement. Well, tonight I pulled it out for the first time in awhile and it was the same ol same ol. For grins, I cycled all the dip switches and got all manner of static and garbage as I flipped through them even without an input. The I pulled the AudioQuest Evergreen cable out and replaced it with a short 2 ft BJC interconnect, and not only is the crap gone, but it sounds amazing. At least as good as my Phonomena II. Of course the PII was connected with the same AQ cable so it may need another listen. This is not the first Evergreen cable I've had go wonky. It's possible that using them on my ARC preamps where the jacks are pretty far apart and it was very tight getting them connect may have killed them. I think I'll stick with BJC unless I find something else. Yes they are thick and bulky and kinda hard to route and the RCA's are huge, but there's no questioning the construction!

 

Say what you might about the sound of the cable, one thing can be said for sure about the BJC LC1 -- it's extremely well-sheilded against EMI noise. With a double copper braid offering 98% coverage and extremely low resistance, it's about as low noise with respect to EMI as you're gonna get from a cable in an unbalanced setup. I can't tell for sure with Audioquest because of all the pseudo scientific mumbo jumbo copy the use to obscure the description of the cable's construction, but it sounds like the Evergreen is a twinax with a foil shield -- that type of shield is good for RF, not so much for EMI, and typically relatively high resistance, if I'm reading between the lines of the AQ description correctly, wouldn't be surprising that the LC1 is quieter in a phono set up.

 

I have a Monster Ref 2 between my parasound zphono and my Yammie pre/pro with my technics sl1200mk5. It has tamed somewhat my AT440mla but not enough so I ordered a denon dl 110 for a more balanced sound. I still intend to use my monster ref2 with it as it is a great warm detailed cable and works well in my phono application. I do find however for my SACD listening and CD listening my Oppo 105d analog out I like my audioquest diamondback for that application. !

 

BJC

 

..and I just added the Silver Resolution RCA interconnect from my Lounge phono stage to the receiver (replacing a set of Black Car Morpheus), now sounds even better!

 

I have the iFi iPhono - I got it for the flexibility with the different curves/filtering/gain. I like it a lot. It sounds pretty neutral to me.

If you haven't it would be nice if you shot them an email to let them know it wasn't their preamp causing the problem! I'm surprised they didn't suggest you swap the cable out as part of the troubleshooting process!

 

Well, the strange thing is that I had tried several different cables to no avail. For some reason it liked the BJC. My last e-mail was a year and a half ago. I doubt I could even find sone to respond to. I had given up on it until I happened upon it last night.