We are doing genelec speakers and a turn table (yet to be determined) and pre-amp (yet to be determined). The turn table will be located in the man cave, and the equipment rack is in the garage less than 100 feet away. What is the best way to pre-wire for this? I am thinking planet wire for rca connections, but what about the ground? We've never done this before and I want to make sure we have all the wiring we need. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

I would use something like the Audio Control Line Driver for this- it's low impedance over Cat5e and it would reduce/eliminate line losses and other problems.

If you list the rest of the equipment, it wold be much easier to determine what is needed.

Thanks. We haven't chosen the other equipment yet.

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.

What if they don't leave room in the design for the pre-amp? I know parasound is small, but what if? The designer is anal.

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.

Brand is irrelevant unless something might have a design feature that could affect the system's cable requirements or performance which, in this case, the only major requirement if I were doing this system would be using some kind of lowZ balanced output to the rack- everything else is optional.

Over 100', I would be surprised if a direct feed from a turntable would be usable with a moving magnet cartridge and with moving coil, it's unlikely that you would hear the music at all.

Over a short distance, lowZ is less of a concern, but it's still necessary to pay attention to cable routing to prevent noise intrusion.

Make your part is as bulletproof as possible: phono preamp goes at the turntable location - non-negotiable.

Designers are always excused for being anal. Sometimes the A/V designer would do well to be anal, also.

Ernie noted the high frequency loss at a distance. The noise intrusion is not even the major factor. Surprised is not an option - the capacitance of longer cables makes it an absolute no-go, don't even think about it...

When I was a kid, with understanding of how to run wire but no understanding of the SYSTEM we're talking about here, I found that ten feet of wire extension created an audible loss of highs and injection of hum.


Wire up a turntable the way it's made to be wired up.

The cartridge output level and impedance, cable impedance (length is a factor), signal level, equalization requirement, phono preamp input impedance, the EQ curve of the phono preamp, and turntable chassis grounding all make up a SYSTEM to deliver high fidelity audio. That's the way to wire it, period.

You'll find people in forums saying they extended the wires and everything was just fine. I'd like to know where they buy test records (they don't mention any tests at all) that allow them to make measurements of the system performance with and without the extensions. "Yup, sounds good to me" is probably the test.

I know an audio sale rep whose "system" includes super-special power and signal cables, Mark Levinson mono block power amps, separate DAC (he has said he doesn't like digital many times over the years), very expensive turntable and his new preamp that retails in the $7K range. I listened to his "system" a few weeks ago and I wasn't impressed. The frequency response was fine, but the position of his speakers was wrong and he had a row of pillows sitting on the backrest of his sofa so they absorbed on that side, but the other side was more reflective. We listened to a few of my LPs and I'm familiar with the sound when I have listened with speakers and headphones- the sound at his place had nothing that seemed to be coming from between the speakers unless I moved to a different position. When I have commented about AudioQuest cables with the batteries or some other item that he thinks is important but isn't backed up by anything resembling science, he just says "It's experiential". Apparently and obviously, I don't experience it the same way he does but if something is lacking and/or making me sense that phase cancellation is occurring, something is wrong. Maybe I'll ask to borrow his cable stands. Or not.

Depending on which forum(s) you read, you may be tossed because you think test equipment is important, but they see as some kind of heretical contraption. OTOH, I have read that Technics Thruster speakers are the best, so I'm heading out shortly, to find me some. Oh, yeah, that will make my system really come to life!

The customary arm/cable capacitance range is figured into the overall frequency response. Longer cables imply more capacitance and, therefore, a roll off of the highs. Moving coil cartridges, because they are generally lower impedance devices, are less sensitive to cable capacitance.


For the most part I am never impressed when I go to high end shows. Visually, the kit can be interesting, but (with very few exceptions) the audio quality is "yawn" or worse.

Well, yes, but moving coils output in the range of 1/10 the voltage (-20dB) of moving magnets. This means 20 dB more amplification must be used so the signal level matches other devices. This means that if the lower impedance advantage is anything less than a 20 dB improvement in S/N, it's a net step backward.

Back in turntable days, there were two approaches to overcoming the moving coi's physical deficit: you get an audio preamp/amp or receiver with a moving coil input, or you get a matching transformer that jacks the voltage up, incidentally also jacking up the impedance to a value that matches a phono preamp's input impedance.

In either case, CABLES ARE NOT EXTENDED. The turntable's cables are used, as is, with the ground connected wherever the devices say to connect it.



What kills me about demos of such stuff is that they won't put on something that everyone is familiar with, so we can compare with our memories of the thing and notice how GREAT it now sounds. They put on some sheepherder under a full moon, singing while sliding down a glacier, accompanied by Tibetan Monk speed metal. Yeah, sure, that sounds better than it used to.

Then tell them client doesn't get to have a turntable.  That will change the attitude.

Who is going to live there?  Designer or client?  Pretty sure client will see to it that there is room for a phono pre-amp given the choice.

In about 1980, Mannheim Steamroller was a huge hit at CES, so the owner of the store bought one of their records> I wrote 'records' because it took a while before anyone (me) read the liner notes and since it was 12" diameter, we just played it at the usual 33-1/3 RPM, which produced amazing bass response from smaller speakers The larger ones often sounded a bit better, but the response was already in their range. It was supposed to be played at 45 RPM.

I liked the music more at the slower speed- sounded a bit like Twin Peaks.

The owner also beat the crap out of Feels So Good and we were sooooooo tired of it that we (being a record store, too) would put his album in the return bin. One of the guys passed hte demo cassette tape through the bulk eraser about 30 times, just to get rid of it. Bossola would just open another copy and waltz into the demo room as if nothing had happened.

We eventually out-grew that store and built a larger one at the other end of the mall. The night we moved, we tipped the front counter over to see if anything good was underneath- found about 156 copies of Feels So Good.