On March 3, 2017 at 19:21, P2P said...
I do this all the time. Parasound Z-Series phono pre-amp co-located with the turntable. Out of that in to an AudioControl balanced line driver. Cat 5 or 6 to rack. AudioControl balanced line receiver at rack into a line input (NOT the phono input) on your pre-amp, pre/pro, AVR, whatever. Works fine. No noise.
Tone arm ground goes to phono pre-amp and then you don't have to worry about it anymore.
Zackly on all points.
Backing up to the ideas: turntable cables must not be extended, so the phono preamp goes near the turntable. As said, connect the turntable ground to the chassis ground of the preamp. Remember "phono preamp" has a RIAA equalization stage in it, so it's a specific item, not just another preamplifying stage.
From there, use whatever method you'd use to get two channels of audio to go the distance.
tca, you mention room in the design for the pre-amp. What do you mean by "room"? Cubic inches? Dollars? And pre-amp: you mean phono preamp?
The phono preamp is not optional, but necessary. Without one, turntable audio will be (rounding off) about the right volume at 20 KHz, 20 dB too low at 1 KHz, and 40 dB too low at the bottom end of the bass.
And if you tried to send the audio from the turntable to a phono preamp in the rack, you'd have a huge loss of high frequency audio, as well as, probably, horrible hum.
