mcintosh MT10 turntable good or not.

Cables have 3 basic specifications--resistance, inductance, and capacitance, or R-L-C. Capacitance is measured in farads, or in the case of interconnects, picoFarads (pF). High capacitance rolls off the treble and slows down the rise time. The signal coming off a tonearm is rather fragile and easily darkened by too much capacitance.

Generally, you'll want the total capacitance of the interconnect from the tonearm to the preamp to be around 100 pF or less. Some cable companies publish capacitance figures and some don't. Sometimes you can pick up the figure when a reviewer tests them. I remember around 15 years ago that the Audioquest Emerald interconnect had vanishingly low capacitance.

Kimber cable interconnects have pretty low capacitance. They rate their Timbre interconnect at 45.8 pF, I think, for 1 meter.

Nordost often has *really* low capacitance. Their Solar Wind interconnect is rated at a very low 7.6 pF/foot. Their highest price stuff is around 20 pF/foot.

Cardas Audio also publishes their RLC specs. Cardas 300B is 42.9 pF/foot; Cardas Cross is 26.4 pf/foot (just about right), and their more upscale Neutral Reference is 19 pf/foot. They also make an entire line of DIN-plug phono cables.

01-17-08: Beerdraft
Thanks Swampwalker, I actally went crazy trying to get better sound now from the CD player and bought the classe cdp202 today. This table is both a blessing and a bad thing being it made me want a better cd player as I won't even listen to a disc right now.

Everybody's different, but in my case, when I got my turntable last March, it sounded so much better than the CDs I'd been spinning for the previous 20 years that I didn't even play a CD again (except to compare to the same recording on LP) for 10 months. In the meantime I acquired somewhere between 300 and 400 LPs.

I finally got an Oppo DV-980H, especially for its SACD ability, and I use it some for music and a lot for upconverting standard DVDs, but when I want to connect with the artist and the music, I go to the turntable.

Back in March, before deciding where to spend my money, I took an SACD and direct disc LP of the same recording to Seattle's highest high end shop and played it on a very mid 5-figures Linn rig. The LP made the SACD sound threadbare and hashy. I bought a turntable the next weekend.

01-18-08: Beerdraft
Thats awsome Johnnyb53, where do you get your LP's?

Most of them are from thrift shops and the dollar bins at used record stores. For titles that are important to me, I got a few from eBay in the $5-15 range, and I bought a few new ones at a local store. My most expensive new ones are a 180g 30th anniv. "Dark Side of the Moon" and 200g Classic Records edition of Diana Krall's "From This Moment On," cut on a tube-driven lathe.

I have been amazed at how many used records still have great sound in them and most need little cleaning. For those that need cleaning, a blast or two from a handheld steamer does a good job.

I'm in my 50s, so there is a lot of music from the '60s thru the '80s that I'm fond of, and none of it sounded right on the CD reissues (especially the Beatles). The used LP market enables me to rediscover these musical treasures often for .50 to 1.00 a pop (but not the Beatles). Still, I managed to find never-played Japanese pressings of Rubber Soul and Revolver for $12 ea.