Impedance in vinyl playback (carts, cables & phono stages)

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roscoeiii

Hi everyone,

I have been curious lately about the impact of a cart or phono cable's impedance on the sound of vinyl playback.

Part A: Assuming a phono stage that can be properly loaded for the cart, are there qualities in general that one can expect from a low or high impedance cart? Is high or low preferable for one reason or another? How does the story change, if at all for LOMC, HOMC, MI, and MM carts?

I notice that for example the Denon 103 is much higher impedance than the 103R. And the Dyna 20X2L and XX-2 Mk II are both lower impedance than the 17D3 which is intermediate between those in price.

Part B: What about phono cables? I know that many manufacturers think phono cables need different characteristics due to the low level signals that they carry. And I just got an Audience cable that is designed specifically to be used with low impedance carts (I suppose this is what prompted the thread). How would impedance of a cart potentially affect your phono cable buying decision? Or what would you expect from a phono cable of high or low impedance.

Part C: And how about the phono stage, and its relationship to cart and cable impedance? IIRC, the loading of the phono stage is usually determined somewhat by the impedance of the cart.

A lot for one thread. But DIG IN folks. Look forward to hearing your thoughts. This ought to be educational.

neobop

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Re: Impedance in vinyl playback (carts, cables & phono stages)
« Reply #1 on: 16 Nov 2012, 02:27 pm »
Complicated subject which should include inductance.  Any coil of wire is also an inductor, like a speaker coil.  Having inductance as an electrical property of the cart output (HO) has the affect of lowering the high frequency resonance of the cart.  In this case it's the shunt capacitance of the cables and phono stage that comes into play because it's the combination of capacitance and that inductance that causes that HF lowering.  Sometimes this is used to "tune" the output by augmenting the treble, hence capacitance recommendations by a manufacturer.  Cable resistance doesn't really come into play.  I have seen low inductance cables made for LOMCs.

In general it seems that HO carts with < around 500mH inductance and < around 1200ohms, perform best.  This would be impedance, not DC resistance.  It is possible to have a nice sounding HO cart that is outside these parameters, but chances are it's not "state of the art".  High inductance/impedance carts like the Shure M97 or Stanton 681 tend to be mellow and the better ones like these have their appeal and compliment some systems.  AT (MM) carts need very low shunt capacitance, < 200pF.  That's hard to do and is much of the reason IMO for the overly bright house sound perception. 

Capacitance doesn't matter much (usually) for LO carts.  Self-inductance is typically in micro Henries and only comes into play when output is very low which requires alot of gain, and cart impedance is relatively high (30 - 40 ohms).  This high impedance can be  assiociated with high inductance and can cause ultrasonic ringing in a phono stage with extended bandwidth.  If you have a cart with 33 ohms impedance and have to load it  at 33 ohms to get it to sound right, chances are this is what's going on.  I haven't heard this about the DL-103, just the DL-S1 and 304.  Those two must have very high inductance due to nonmagnetic core coils.  BTW, loading down a cart at its impedance will cut the effective output in half.
neo