When to choice XLR over RCA ICs.

Literally everything in my system except the turntable have balanced connections, and I’d do that, too if I could find a turntable Inlike that was balanced.  (Pro-ject has some new ones, but I’ve never seen them in person.)

Nothing fancy.  Made with top line Mogami wire and top Furutech connections.

Makes a huge difference.

@atmasphere 

Thanks for the information re: jury rigging XLR/balanced connection.  I may do so.

I became interested in the topic because I have (and love) a VPI Avenger Titan turntable with a Fat Boy tone arm.  The Avenger has a separate unit where you can precisely adjust the speed of the two AC motors (that, in turn, rotate a magnetic plate).  The power cord that ran from the control unit, unfortunately, was a bit stingy and ran parallel to my Cardis phono cables for a good bit and I got a fair amount of noise.

I resolved the issue with an nice, shielded, after market power cord (nothing exotic).  Not sure if it was from the shielding or simply because I bought a longer cord that allowed me to drop it behind the console, so it did not run so close to the phono cables.  Anyway, problem resolved.

But the process did get me thinking about balanced/XLR turntables and phono preamps.

Turns out Pro-Ject has a line of balanced turn tables, using what looks like "microphone style" XLRs, such as this:

I thought about it a bit -- and my phono preamp (which I also love) is a Parasound JC3+ (I think that's the model) and it -- despite having XLR "outs" and essentially being completely separate left and right pre-amps in one box does not anticipate XLR "in", so, given I resolved the issue (to my ears, at least) did not pursue the matter further.

I have a fair amount of Mogami wire laying about, so I may see if I can improve over the Cardis interconnects.

Thanks again.