Impedance mismatch question

Yes I have extremely happy Lightspeed customers that are driving it into 22k poweramps with tube riaa phono stages as the source.
As for driving interconnects the only time this comes into factor is when the interconnects is poor quality and has vast amounts of capacitance (>200pf per foot), then it can roll of the highs, but the same cables will also roll of the highs with high output impedance tube preamps, tube phono stages and tube cdp's of which there are quite a few around.

Cheers George

Hi 2out2sea there is no hard rule here.
We've done experiments with very good equipment with 30 odd audiophiles where we could vary on the fly the impedance ratio from 1:100 down to 1:1 (your case is 1:23)

We started at 1:100 with these listening test, and the group could not detect any change till we got down to 1:5 only then only two of the 30 audiophiles thought they detected a very slight compression to the dynamics but weren't sure, and when we got to 1:1 only 50% of the group detected a slight compression.

This was done using quality interconnects of 1.5mts each long that were 100pf per foot of capacitance both sides of the Lightspeed Attenuator passive pre.

So your 1:23 should be fine so long as your interconnects are good quality low capacitance, which most quality ones are anyway.

Cheers George

Al sorry I should have mentioned at the end of the day a Cymer tube pre with 2k capacitor coupled output impedance was subsituted for the Lightspeed and similar ratio results were observed. Of course as you say being tube tube and capacitor coupled it's output impedance will change a bit according to frequency. All impedance ratio changes were done on the fly on the input of a Cymer tube poweramp using a 32 position switch resistor loading to ground.

Cheers George