shielded cables & IC's or not?

I recently switched from Phoenix Gold interconnecs (shielded, twisted multistranded design & cooked for a week on a Mobie) to Tice Audio (solid core, unshielded, TPT treated). Simply no comparison...so much music, smoothness of sound and openness!

I still don't know whether a cartridge's signal to the phono preamp should be shielded...

Of course, you should try both. The fact that you live in a large city may(?) make "shielded" a better option. Do you live in a private house or a multi-dwelling? When I lived in apartments in New York City, shielded cables always seemed to work better.

I agree that shielding tends to add unwanted side effects to audio cables. Of course, this is more noticable with some more than others..depending on the cable itself.

Unless you have gobs of wires going here and there and running parallel to each other (always cross your cables as close to 90 degrees as possible where they HAVE to meet), have cable TV hooked up in your system (a HUGE source of RFI and other nasties), or live near radio towers and the like, MOST systems are not exposed to enough interference to warrant the necessity of shielding.

Shielding veils the last bits of detail, emotion, and clarity of the sound. I make my own cables and have eperimented by making identical cables with the exception of shielding and there is an obvious difference even from the starting block. -Jason

I agree with Bruiserwy. Don't let living in a large city stop you from getting unshielded. IME RFI has to be quite severe before shielded IC sounds better than unshielded. If I were in your shoes I'd just get used, unshielded IC. In the unlikely event that they are noisy, just sell them.

i like unshielded cables too. But no one has mentioned long runs. i have never had problems with short run ics but the long runs end up being a problem. 20 foot cables will usually bring in a radio station.

fwiw

Jim