Capacitance is a function of cable layup, coaxial is inherently capacitative which is minimised by maximising distances between signal (core) and return (screen); unscreened cables, which usually rely on twisting to reduce stray pickup are inherently lower capacitance designs, they just require careful siting to avoid pickup of stray signal from power lines, switchmode PSUs, and anything with digital processing within it.All cable designs are a compromise - generally changing one characteristic to reduce one parameter yields an increase elswhere.
I don't personally think phono - pre is all that critical: the signal has been amplified to at least a volt or two usually; the run from cart to phono is much more important.
In any case, the overall length of cables usually makes more difference than their designs.
Oh ---------shorter the better presumably?
Capacitance scales linearly, so the shorter the better. However, what the effect of capacitance is, depends on where it is used, and the details of the sending impedance. In the case of a phono stage to amplifier, this isn't too critical unless the phono amp has a high output impedance, which is why I suspect the recommendation was for low capacitance cable. Pre-amp to power amp or source to pre-amp are generally non critical, whilst cartridge to phono is much more critical. In the case of a MM cartridge, added capacitance must be carefully controlled, as otherwise the frequency response suffers, whilst for MC cartridges, the added capacitance isn't critical, but good screening is.
As to cable length in itself, it isn't important, but capacitance and screening is, hence the advice above that length matters. Not because of the length in itself, but because of the screening and capacitance issues that accompany long cables.
S
