Mcintosh C220 balanced out

The majority of McIntosh equioment (including my 2102 amp) are, I believe unbalanced and there is an extra circuit added for the convenience of balanced.

Many quite recent models of McIntosh gear have an odd looking output that has a 'balanced' label that have no correlation to othere equipment's definition of balanced.

Yes it is correct. For a fully balanced McIntosh preamp, look at the C100, C200 or C1000 instead.

Arthur

Thanks everyone for the quick response. I hope Mcintosh will come out with a balanced tube pre soon, a c1000 junior will be nice.

Interestigly they describe some units as dual balanced such as the MC 712 Pre which I owned or the MC300.A customer was upset he bought the MC300 just before the MC353 came out so I called Mac to tell me differences.They descibed the non-fuly balnced gear as "dual balanced circuts" so it will deliver XLR's over a long distance.The 352 was simmilar but was "quad" balanced or fully balanced.I know rule is that baalnced is always ebtter but with Mac and some gear it didn't make much of a difference since you had XLR's for greater than 10 fty. runs.According to Hartley's book on Hi-end many high end designs sound BETTER using unbalnced connections.The desire to use them incertain cases is bad if say you are going from one type of circut to another asnd back.Keeping it the same is better so you don't end up with phase problems.But goiong from CD with RCA's to Mac pre and then using one conversion to use long cables shouldn't screw things up.I sold Mac for years and was hard prssed to distinguish between amps as close in design as the MC300 with the amp which replaced (and presaged all their new balnced series).It wasn't like comparing say Krell AB class amps with the Class A stuff where difference is huge.
Chazz

Maybe this comparison link from McIntosh will help.

Excuse me for jumpimg in, but I have a question. I have the Cambridge 840c cdp (bal out), Mcintosh c220 pre, and a Mcintosh MC352. I have been demoing balanced cables so I can incorporate my behringer deq which will only accept xlr connections. I figured I was better off not using rca's with adaptors to hook up the deq. What would you guys recommend?

I hate asking questions within a thread, but I hope someone can help me out.

Thanks.