Long cables from turntable or phono stage

OK- I am going to be the lone voice here. Most LOMC cartridge don't make much voltage but they do make a surprising amount of current, otherwise you could not load them at 50 or 100 ohms and get away with it.

So I am asking here that you all think about that simple fact.

What this means is that the cartridge and cable is a fairly low impedance system, and the length of the cable is thus not nearly as problematic as suggested above. What the real problem is: the cartridge has an inductance and the cable has a capacitance. This will not cause problems at audio frequencies, but will cause issues at Radio Frequencies.

This is true even if the cable is only one meter BTW.

So what you **may** have to do is adjust the loading resistor, should it be the case that your preamp cares about RF coming into its phono input (some preamps, particularly solid state preamps, don't like RF at their inputs and this can really affect the sound).

Bottom line: you can very successfully run a 4 meter interconnect. You may experience some artifact from the cable, but if you run it balanced you can eliminate that.

Now if you are using a high output moving magnet, then its a different deal and you will find that because its impedance is higher, it is also more sensitive to the cable.

Thanks Doug, missed that in my fanaticism. In that case the capacitance of the cable is playing a big role in the loading of the cartridge. If it were me I would measure the capacitance of the cable, subtract the capacitive value of my one-meter cable, and then pick a capacitor of the resulting difference value. I would then plug it into the loading strip of the preamp, and see how it interacts with the cartridge. If a roll-off is detected, a lower capacitance cable should be found of a preamp could be placed by the 'table itself. But if the cartridge is not sounding rolled off then its good to go.

Any SUT is capable of receiving the signal in balanced domain, so you can run balanced from the cartridge if you have an SUT, regardless of the phono section. There are indeed balanced phono cables available too.

You know that funny ground wire on the single-ended (RCA) cables that no other single-ended source seems to need? That is there because you are taking a balanced system and running it single ended. A balanced system has a ground system that is independent of the signal, and has to be grounded separately. If the cable were balanced, it would be pin 1 of the XLR.

That is correct, but you are helping things by not using the shield for signal current. That reduces the cable's tendency to introduce artifact.