Phono cables need effective shielding because they carry very low level signals which is why cable manufacturers make specific phono cables. Synergistic Research, as do most cable makers, makes phono cables designed for this purpose. I have a complete loom of Foundation SR cables and the lack of noise and black backgrounds are just part of why I enjoy them. Back in the day, phono cables came terminated to plug directly into the tonearm and couldn't be attached to RCA jacks, today turntables sometimes come with RCA outputs but that does not mean you can just plug in a normal IC and expect proper performance transferring the low level output from a phono cartridge, you must use a properly shielded cable.
Issues with heavy noise using RCA cable connection to Record Player
Greetings,
I have a Denon DP-450 USB record player using the Ortofon 2M Red cartridge on a Yamaha TSR-7810. It was using old Audioquest (AQ) Ruby X3 RCA cables and there were no issues to speak of. I had a pair of Synergistic Research (SR) Foundation RCA interconnects that I wanted to try to use, so I switched out the AQ Ruby X3s. Suddenly, there is an extremely loud buzzing hum from both speakers that gets louder as you increase the volume.
I wasn't using the grounding pins, so I got a grounding cable and connected to both the player and receiver. That did nothing. I tried to see if it changed if the motor runs on the player, or if it goes away when music is actually playing, and tried to see if that noise happens on any other input on the receiver. I narrowed the scope to the phono jack. I decided to try a completely different cable and brought out my aging Monster Cable Reference 2 RCAs. No issues. No hum. No buzz. I went back to the AQ Ruby X3s and again, no issues. As soon as I put the SR Foundation cables, horrible buzz/humming noise again.
So the issue appears to be with the SR Foundation Cables. What's going on with these? They never presented a problem with other components that were using it. It seems to be limited to use on a record player. I tried seeing if I could find the answer out on the web, and the answers are perplexing at best. It could be a faulty cable, but as I said, it will play music through it and has no issues on other devices. The other issue could be capacitance? Apparently that is an important spec when using RCA cables on a record player. I am not sure what the AQ Ruby X3s and Monster Cable Reference 2 are doing differently. Is there something I am missing or haven't ruled out? Do I need to find an alternative method for grounding when using the SR Foundation cables?
Thanks in advance for assistance.