I’ve recently dived back into the vinyl pool and just went straight for a P6 with the Ania cartridge and a Rega MC phono stage into a Naim Uniti Star.
While the sound is nothing short of astonishing (and easily as good or better than the best streaming from Tidal), I feel like the weak link is the Audioquest Chicago RCA’s I hastily picked up without giving it much thought.
I’d love to hear what others are using with similar analog setups and what their recommendations are. I’m highly pragmatic when it comes to interconnects, but I can definitely hear a difference between the super-cheap speaker cables and the Naim NACA5 cables (for example). I also didn’t like what the Transparent Cables with the ‘network’ did to the music, for what it’s worth.
I have the same set up but with the Ania Pro cartridge. I am using Mark Grant HDX1 RCA’s from Phono MC to Star. I tried various Audioquest alternatives costing a lot more and they didn’t sound any better and also tried a Chord RCA to Din cable and that sounded considerably worse so I stuck with the Mark Grant. Sounds much better than streaming
I’m following this topic with interest; when I acquired my P8 a year ago, I was under the assumption that I still had a Linn Black lying around somewhere. Since that was not the case, I hastily picked-up a Van den Hul “The Name” RCA cable to connect the Rega Fono MC to my Nova.
I’m still wondering what a Linn Black - or even better; a Linn Silver interconnect could do …
When I had a Rega phono stage I used a Naim RCA to DIN cable and it was excellent. They only cost £120 too, and I never felt the need for anything better. That was with a Planar 10 and Aria phono. With a P6 I don’t feel it’s worth spending more: the money would be better used upgrading to a P8.
The Star is converting everything to digital anyway, you could skip a lot of analog cable by replacing the phono mc with a Parks Budgie or Waxwing and just running digital straight into the Star.
HH -no plans to go to a P8 any time soon, my vinyl collection isn’t extensive enough or of sufficient quality to justify that jump; however, I do want to optimize the setup I’ve got. I’m curious to know the details of the captive leads Rega uses considering this would really be the limiting factor in terms of connectors from the TT.
Maryland -this is a curious aspect of the Star, and one I’m considering with a possible upgrade to a Nair XS2 / Supernait 2 + ND5 XS2. I didn’t realize this when I bought the Star, I had assumed there would be a direct analog throughput, but clearly that’s not the case. Oddly listening to the same tracks through Tidal and the P6, there’s a clear difference with the P6 typically sounding a good deal more alive, organic, and musical, in spite of the A->D->A conversions. I can’t help but wonder how the Rega will sound without the redundant steps.