need help on balanced interconnect connections


I am using balanced interconnects with my equipment. I recently added a piece from Accuphase and noticed that there balanced arrangement is not standard. They use a 1=ground, 2=negative, 3= positive arrangement. The rest of my equipment uses a 1=ground, 2=positive, 3=negative arrangement.

Can I use a standard balance interconnect between these configurations or does one have to be modified? and if so, how does this work?

The Accuphase equipment is being added between my pre-amp and amp.

Thanks for your help

Thanks for your help.

Dave
thilgie
You may use any balanced interconnect without modification! You might want to correct the phase inversion by switching your amp speaker wires, so that (+) from your amp is connected to the (-) speaker terminal. This will return the signal at the speakers to the correct absolute phase. BE CAREFUL IF YOU ARE BI-WIRING SPEAKERS! You don't want to short out the amp, if you forget to reverse one of the sets of terminals at the speaker end...that is why I recommend making the switch at the amp terminals.

So, what are you using, their digital eq DG-28?
The "Japanese" pinout connection for balanced connections is the opposite of the US standard - it swaps the "hot" and "cold" pins. A standard balanced cable will work, but the absolute polarity (aka "phase") of the source will be inverted.

Pick an option:

If your preamp allows polarity selection then just reverse it there (reversing a reverse polarity yields normal polarity). I don't know what sources you're using, but many DACS also allow you to invert the polarity of the signal, and this will work as well.

Since this gizmo is going between your amp and preamp and will affect all sources, then you can also compensate by reversing the connections (+ and -) at one end (either amp or speaker) of each speaker. This would be the simplest solution.

Finally you could modify one (and only one!) of the set of balanced cables going to or from the gizmo by reversing the pin 2 and 3 connections at one end. If you do this mark the cable carefully as it will invert polarity whenever used.