Cable length (1 Viewer)

[Chuck_C]

Ahh, First post...

I have a entertainment surround with towers on each side of my RPTV. All my components are on one side. I would like to put a turntable and a tape deck on the other side. Question- how long can the audio input cables be for the phono and for the tape inputs? Would 8’ be too long?

Chuck

 

[Chuck_C]

Sorry about that last post. I have my font size set to 10, what gives?

 

[Joseph_W]

8 feet should be fine. I've read where many people use 6 feet between components so they can pull them out and make connections without worrying about running out of cable. Your 8 feet sounds fine, just don't use real cheap cable. Poor shielding and poor impedence missmatches will cause you to pick up excessive noise from your RPTV. That being said, I have no idea where to draw the line on what is too cheap and what is not.

Joe

 

[Parker Clack]

Chuck:

You have your font size to 10. You are thinking of point size not font size. I have set it to 2.

Parker

 

[Chuck_C]

Thanks Parker. That's much better.
Chuck Curtin

 

[Saurav]

An 8' cable from your turntable to your phono input? I would be worried.... I'm assuming your turntable doesn't have a built in phono stage, and so you're using the phono stage (i.e., the phono input) on your receiver/preamp. Remember that a cartridge's output is in the millivolt range, which makes it a thousand times weaker than the signal level in a regular interconnect (say, from the output of a CD player). This raises several issues - first, the length of the cable adds capacitance which presents a more difficult load for your cartridge to drive, and in some cases may cause higher frequencies to get rolled off. Second, since the signal in the phono cable is going to be amplified about a thousand times, any noise/EMI/RFI picked up by that cable is also going to be amplified a thousand times, and that's before it gets to the same level as the signal from your CD player, and then gets amplified again by your power amps.

So.... as you can see, I wouldn't advise it. If you're running long cables, you want the source of that cable to be something that's capable of 'driving' those long cables. A phono cartridge is certainly not up to this task. I would recommend getting an outboard phono stage, keeping that close to the turntable, and running cables from that to the receiver/preamp (this would not go into a regular input, not the phono input). Depending on your budget, Radio Shack makes an excellent $25 battery powered phono stage that is supposedly better than many $200 phono stages. Of course, if you have more money to spend, there are better phono stages out there. Even with the RS unit, I'd be wary about an 8' run. Maybe the phono stages from NAD/Creek/Rotel/Parasound might be more apropriate.

 

[Joseph_W]

Chuck,

Sorry I misseed the fact that one of your units was a phonograph! I agree with Saurav completely!

Maybe you can leave the phono and move something else over (maybe a VCR?)

Anyway, sorry for the bum advice!

Joe

 

[Chuck_C]

That's what I was worried about, the phono cartridge. I had better move it closer.

What about the cassette deck? Would 8' of audio run be acceptable for that run?

 

[Saurav]

I agree with Joseph here, 8' should be fine. Also, IMO a cassette deck isn't exactly the last word in high resolution sources, and you probably don't use that for super-critical listening, so you probably don't care about minor degradations from that source. That's the way I've arranged my stereo - important sources are compromised the least, to the extent possible.

Get decent cable with decent shielding and you shouldn't have any problems.

 

[Chuck_C]

Thanks for the info everyone. It's appreciated.