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Is it the tube pre or the rca/xlr adapter?

HELP! I've recently added a vk-50se, only my second tube component I have ever owned, and a Classe CA301 to my system. Speakers are Aerial 10T's. I am feeding the signal from my 834P with XLO single ended cables plugging into rca/xlr adapters at the pre. It seems that I have lost some details in the music that were there with my old Rotel pre with the same phono setup. BTW, I really like what the bat did for the sound of CDs, but I would prefer to improve the sound from my LPs.

I have tried moving the pre-amp to its own spiked amp stand and it did not make much difference.

I am guessing there is about 100 hrs. on the bat based on what the previous owner told me and the hours I have put on it. The 301 has about 70 hrs on it.

Do you guys with more experience think that it could be the rca/xlr adapters holding the signal back or do things need to burn in some more or do I need to play with placement, etc?

TIA,

Dan
dan_ed

Showing 2 responses by twl

twl
3,251 posts
 
I don't know what the cartridge is, that you are using, but loading has a significant impact on Moving Coil cartridges. It may need a different load than the one that is selected on your BAT.

I hope you can get your cartridge leads fixed, so you can get back to your other problems.

Life does suck sometimes.
twl
3,251 posts
 
Why are you using the balanced adapters? If you are going into the BAT with single ended, there is no need to use balanced outs from the EAR. That is simply running through a line balancing transformer and adapters for no good reason. Just run single ended on both ends. There is no inherent advantage to running balanced cables, unless the equipment is designed with balanced internal circuitry, and even then you have to have both units being balanced and the correct cables with balanced connections on both ends. I'd run normal single ended RCA plugs on both ends.
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