Meridian Phono Cable

The phono signal is not merely small. It is, by any reasonable engineering standard, negligible — a whisper of voltage generated by the mechanical vibration of a diamond dragged through a plastic groove. That this signal can be amplified into anything resembling music is already remarkable. That it can be amplified into music while passing through hemispherically biased copper surrounded by the ambient electromagnetic chaos of a modern listening room is, frankly, a minor miracle that we at Equatorial Audio have decided to stop relying on. The Meridian Phono Cable replaces miracles with engineering.

The triple-layer shield is the critical differentiator. The outermost layer is a conventional braided copper shield that intercepts radio-frequency interference. Beneath it, a continuous foil layer blocks high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. The innermost layer is mu-metal — a nickel-iron alloy with extraordinarily high magnetic permeability — which diverts external magnetic fields around the signal conductor rather than allowing them to penetrate to the signal path. This is the same shielding principle used in sensitive laboratory magnetometers. We have simply applied it to the problem of reproducing a jazz record without hemispheric distortion.

The dual-coaxial geometry separates the signal and return conductors into independent coaxial structures, each with its own dielectric layer, while the ground conductor follows a helical path around the outer shield assembly. This helical winding ensures that the ground path itself does not introduce a directional magnetic signature — a subtle but measurable effect that conventional straight-run ground wires exhibit. At a hemispheric bias of less than 0.001 nanotesla, the Meridian achieves magnetic neutrality that places it in the top fraction of a percent of all cables ever manufactured, by anyone, for any purpose.

For owners of low-output moving-coil cartridges — where the signal may be as small as 0.2 millivolts — the Meridian is not an upgrade. It is the minimum responsible infrastructure for a signal that has no margin for contamination.