Are You Happy With Your Phono Preamp?

I was thrilled when I upgraded to a VAC Renaissance SE phono stage ~ 4 years ago. It made vinyl a more more engaging, beautiful experience. My prior phono was a Rogue Ares Magnum - good for the money, but the rest of my system (especially table & cartridge) had well outpaced it, and I felt the 4x more expensive VAC actually gave a good return-on-investment. As good as a $3K phono stage can be, you’re definitely leaving musical enjoyment "on the table" versus higher tier stages IMO. I even tried the Herron VTPH-2A to see if I could "downgrade" from the VAC - no dice. It handily beat the Ares, though! 

Not out of dissatisfaction with the VAC, just curious to try something new, a few months ago I picked up a factory-refurbished ARC Phono 3SE. It’s phenomenal. I also have a Ref 6 preamp, and that pairing is immaculate. Highly recommended! I still really like (and am keeping) the VAC, and it performs particularly well in a full VAC pre/power stack (with stock tubes - too much rolling can mess with the synergy, as I’ve had to learn a few times), but the Ref 3SE has become my primary go-to phono.

Ask an ARC dealer about the CPO (certified pre-owned) and FRU (factory refurbished) units, and whether they have a Ref 3 or 3 SE available. They come with warranty. I am not a dealer and receive no incentive for this :)

Your table/cart is excellent, and I think like I was you're well positioned to reap the benefits of an amazing phono stage. 

Definitely - the ARC Ref 3 phono & 6 pre are a natural, beautiful match. Though I don't have an ARC amp, the ARC pre+phono pairing still shines here. 

Of the 3 non-ARC amps I have, the 2 more clean / neutral / fast / dynamic sounding amps (Phison A2.120 SE and Rogue Apollo Dark) are turning out to be the better complement with Ref 3SE & 6. The VAC 200iQ's have a more lush / romantic / rounded sonic spin, and it does some things incredibly well with the ARC stack, but the other amps feel like more natural partners here. 

But I still cannot see how it can be fully balanced if it has only phonos for inputs. If phonos can be balanced, why does it need XLRs for outputs? And why do ARC included XLRs in and out on the Ref pre-amps? And on earlier phono amps like the PH2 that I used with pleasure for 20 years.

@clearthinker  The tonearm cable from turntable has a separate grounding wire. Instead of duplicating the ground wire per L+R channels (dual 3-pin XLRs), here it’s common for both channels. That’s what the grounding lug next to the input RCAs is for. So IF they wired the tonearm RCAs with "+" and "-" balanced signals on pin and barrel, with ground on the separate grounding wire, and with the ARC taking it in this way (isolating the barrel signal carrying "-" from the chassis), it could be fully balanced over RCAs. There are enough separate conductors. BUT I have no idea if this is how it’s actually setup; it depends on your tonearm cable’s wiring, and I’m not sure this is even a good idea - exposing the "-" signal on an exposed RCA barrel kind of defeats the purpose of common mode noise rejection.

Even if it’s NOT a balanced signal coming in, there can still be benefit from using a differential input stage and running everything downstream fully balanced, IMO (like Stax headphone amps).

@clearthinker

Even if the tonearm input is single-ended, if the ARC has a differential input stage, then it can be balanced from the point of input through to its XLR outputs. But it would NOT be a balanced run from the cartridge to the ARC’s RCA inputs - so not able to be "fully balanced" from stylus tip to transducer / speaker. Yeah, really I wonder why they didn’t just include an extra set of XLR inputs. It seems like the table to phono stage interconnect would benefit the MOST from a balanced run!!

As an owner of the 3SE it actually does irk me that it lacks XLR ins, but my tonearm cables are already wired RCA and OMG the damn phono stage sounds so good as is! That said, I have had some noise issues with it from a plasma TV in another room that might well be eliminated with a balanced run from the turntable? These noise issues only appear in High gain mode. When I use Low gain mode with a SUT, they disappear.

And Stax headphones are still wonderful today. Big fan here :)