Help with cable choice please?

You are making this too complicated. In rare cases there can be major impedemce mismatches between amps and preamps but normally it is not an issue. It is even less of an issue with source components connected to a preamp. In thirty years I've never had a problem caused by an interconnect's impedence.

does anyone have an answer? I get the feeling I am not the only one that doesn't understand this.

Sorry, I have never used MIT cables. It seems that you don't have impedance problems if your amp's input impedance is 100K ohms.

Your question is very important when running from the preamp to the amp. The output impedence of a fixed level CD player is not an issue. While this does not address your question, the fact that the output impedence of your CD player is not referenced in the manual is an indication of the lack of relevance.

Take a visit to the Transparent site and you will get a better feel for this. The impedence loads are going to apply mostly to the speaker cables. There is more newer (and even some older) tube equipment that is getting pretty low while some of the SS amps are getting pretty high. Transparent, and others I am sure, address these situations mostly in their speaker cables, but to a certain degree also in their interconnects (from preamp to amp). The variance in CD players is not going to be enough to justify such a fine tuned cable.

So in the words of other respondents - don't sweat it.

I suggest contacting Joe Abrams (thats his member name as well) as he deals in MIT cables, some of which are designed to accomodate impedance matching. He is a "very" helpful gentleman and I think will help clarify things for you.ATB.