Truly Balanced Cheaper Preamplifiers?

Therefore, expensive cables aren’ts as important also.

Oh how I wish this were true!

I argue this with ignorant people on a regular basis. I can even hear the difference between 0.5 an 1.0 XLRs of the same mfg

I've made this point before on other threads but it bears repeating here: If the equipment used with the cables supports the balanced line standard (AES48), then the interconnect cables will not impose any important sonic artifact.


The proof of this is simple: if you've ever heard an RCA or Mercury recording from the late 1950s, the microphone signals of those recordings were passed through some very long (+100 feet) balanced line cables. This was before any exotic interconnect cable industry existed; quite literally the balanced line standard in use at the time **was** the exotic cable technology!


For some reason, the balanced standard is mostly ignored in high end audio. We made the world's first balanced line preamps for home audio and at the time (1989) it didn't occur to us to not support the standard. After all, if a method of making interconnect cables be absolutely sonically neutral and inexpensive, you'd think audiophiles would be all over that.


But almost right away, other manufacturers began making balanced line products also, and we saw that the standard wasn't being supported. Part of this was probably because to do it right you need an output transformer (or you do it the way we did it, but we have two patents on our technique, which is direct-coupled). I suspect that the marketing department thought that would be a hard sell or they didn't want the cost in the product. I don't know; I've never asked. But it appears that some manufacturers don't even know that there is a standard.


At any rate, if you don't support the standard, differences in cables will be audible, which isn't how its supposed to work.

When AR were questioned as to how the amplifier can be fully balanced, they said:

 The REF Phono 3SE does not have balanced inputs. We create a balanced signal after the inputs using a phase inverter. What turntable are you using that has balanced outputs? The outputs of the Phono 3SE are balanced and will feed your line stage with a balanced signal, pin two is positive, pin 3 is negative, and pin one is ground.
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Summary: The phase inverter does not increase the gain of the unit, it simply maintains a balance signal through the circuitry. This does provide CMR but we have no published specs on that to share.
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Summary: The REF Phono 3 uses a phase inverter circuit which converts the single ended inputs to balanced so the unit is fully balanced through the unit at at the XLR outputs

All very strange.

@clearthinker   The ARC phono section doesn't have a balanced input. The only explanation I have for this is a failure to realize that call cartridges are balanced sources? Or maybe they worry that dealers won't like it if it uses an XLR input. Dunno. At any rate it sounds like its a single-ended input with a balanced output.


My Triplanars were supplied with balanced connections (XLRs). ARC owns a Triplanar (I know people over there as we're in the same town). So this shouldn't sound weird to them. It does sound like you encountered someone in marketing that didn't really know what was going on.