Just retired and want to get back to vinyl listening

Suggestions for cartridge choices are welcome. Considering .....

Cartridge manufacturers really don't want to admit this, but the ability of the tonearm to properly track the cartridge is far more important than what cartridge! The Triplanar is one of the most adjustable arms made (even can adjust effective mass a bit) so as a result it can track a pretty wide range of cartridges.

IOW you will do well with all the choices you have listed. Your taste in music has nothing to do with it; no cartridge made cares what sort of music you play (this is true of electronics and speakers too), nor does a particular cartridge favor a certain type of music.

So I look at it in terms of how well the cartridge holds up. I've had a Transfiguration Orpheus that has done quite well- its on its 6th year and is still relaxed and musical. I expect sooner or later the suspension will die and when that does it will have acquitted itself quite well.

curious as to why more TT/tonearms would not have balance outputs and equipment inputs for these in various equipment be the xlr balanced inputs

The idea of the cartridge being a balanced source was introduced to home audio in 1989 by Atma-Sphere (the MP-1 was the first balanced line preamp for home use). Before that it just wasn't around. To this day, I still occasionally run into tone arm manufacturers that don't realize that the cartridge (and thus the tone arm) is a balanced source. If we're talking about inexpensive gear that uses OPamps, its almost the same cost to run balanced as it is single-ended. But the industry relies heavily on tradition- meaning that it will try to do the same thing the same way decades on after its been shown that there is a better way. In that regard audio is like a host of other industries- and maybe that's just a human nature thing. 

I am instead asking you how RCA outputs from a typical modern table can be used in balanced form as you clearly stated.

This is sort of a cringe-worthy thing that you sometimes run across. The idea is that the RCA connection is not tied to ground- usually they 'float' and if tied to ground, are done so by a wire. But you could use the ground side as the minus output of the cartridge, and so- you could then have the input circuit be a differential amplifier and *if* the ground wire is tied to chassis it would work. Sort of- you do have this little problem that the '+' output of the cartridge is likely going to be shielded by the '-' output of the cartridge (by the single-ended tone arm cable), and this is where the cringe-worthy issue comes up- this leaves the system highly vulnerable to hum. Now if the cable was built balanced, and the shield was actually the ground wire, then the only area where the system is hum susceptible is the RCA connector itself.

I think this idea got going so that the preamp would be instantly compatible with any turntable interconnect, but in reality it isn't. On top of that, as soon as the minus output is acting as a shield for the plus output, the construction of the cable is going to have an effect on the sound, so you just lost an important aspect of balanced operation, which is cable artifact immunity. IOW it really should be done with an XLR.   

I do have a question -- if folks would be so kind -- about pro/cons on using the rca line inputs - outputs versus the balanced I/O on some of these equipment pieces -- I have no experience at all on the balance I/O - thoughts?

There are several things to understand about balanced. I'll try to not make it too confusing.

There is this thing that is the balanced line standard. It is spelled out in the Audio Engineering Society (AES) file 48.  If your equipment conforms to the standard, a fun thing happens- you can run longer interconnects and they don't have to be exotic (and exotically priced) to sound excellent.

Unfortunately many high end audio companies that offer true balanced equipment don't actually support that standard. The reason is that its hard (see points 2 and 3 below) and some companies don't seem to be aware that it exits.

As a result you'll see really variable comments ranging from mine- which usually read something like 'Once you've heard it set up right, there's simply no going back' to 'balanced is just a gimmick and offers no performance improvement at all'. The latter happens when the standards are ignored. So its important to check with the manufacturer to see if their equipment supports the standard.

In a nutshell, here's the standard:
1) pinout: pin 1 of the XLR is ground, pin 2 noninverting (in the US), pin 3 is inverting (in the US)
2) the output occurs between pins 2 and 3; pin 1 (ground) is ignored and is only used for shielding
3) the system is low impedance; a preamp supporting the standard should be easily able to drive 1000 ohms without frequency response or distortion problems.

FWIW, all cartridges made today are balanced sources. That is why turntables always have that funny 'ground wire' that no other 'single ended' sources seem to have. The ground wire is the shield. So if you have a turntable the signal can easily travel from the LP to the preamp input via a low impedance balanced line- and thus the signal will be more immune to the interconnect cable, making for greater transparency and lower noise to boot. Usually all that is required is to change out the interconnect cable.

An obvious advantage of balanced operation is that you can run long cables. 50 feet is no worries between preamp and amp so its possible to run monoblock amplifiers placed by the speakers and run really short speaker cables- which will ultimately help you with impact and definition. Once you've heard that greater definition, its hard to go back.

The most common myth about balanced line is that its more expensive and there are twice as many components. This is false. It does take more parts, but not twice as many- maybe about 50% more (unless the execution is poor). However your interconnect cables don't have to be as expensive. I think mine cost me about $150.00 for the pair and they are 30 feet long. In practice, the cheaper cables more than make up for the difference in price and quite often you can have greater performance to boot.

@inna  :) my reputation all seems to come from the same place...
I first heard the Audio Notes at a show, seems to me RMAF. If I recall correctly the speakers were in the Electra Fidelity room where there was also a set of M-60s. I thought the two sounded quite good together; is it a bad thing that I commented on something from direct experience?

Totally FWIW: the Audio Note speakers work very well with our amps. They seem to be a very tube-friendly speaker.

If you plan to be playing vinyl, here's a tip:

A lot of ticks and pops that are often associated with LP reproduction are actually artifacts of the phono preamp. This is because if the phono circuit is unstable, it can exacerbate a tick or pop event and make it much more audible than it actually is on the LP surface. This has nothing to do with bandwidth or EQ accuracy BTW- it has to do with how stable the circuit is.

You will find also that the better phono circuits do not require cartridge loading (assuming you are using a low output cartridge) as well (but just to make things more confusing, high output cartridges like most MM cartridges require loading; I can expound on this if you like).

If the preamp does not need loading to sound right with a low output moving coil cartridge, its likely that it will also be more resistant to ticks and pops.

Finally, nearly all cartridges are a naturally balanced source, so it is possible to run balanced from the cartridge right to the preamp. This will eliminate the interconnect cable as a sonic variable, in the very best place to have such an advantage- at the input of the system.

Good Luck!