XLR out on a tuner?


I'm new to hifi and not an audiophile yet but learning a lot lately.

I'm following a Denon DN-300H tuner on the big auction site. It looks very clean and has a remote. I also noticed on the rear it has XLR cable outputs as well as RCA out. Is this sought after? Worth paying extra for? My pre-amp (Acoustic Research LS16) has two open XLR input ports marked Bal1 and Bal2. The price on the tuner is okay and if using XLR cables through the balanced input on the pre-amp is an advantage I might just buy it.

Any assistance much appreciated.
n80

Showing 1 response by cleeds

celander
Given the price point of this tuner, I strongly suspect it is running its XLR outputs in an “unbalanced” configuration (that is, both return and shield are running to ground, like in a RCA interconnect)
That is extremely unlikely because if such a signal were connected to a true balanced (differential) amplifier using a balanced input, severe damage could result. What is probable is that the tuner uses op-amps at its output to create balanced signals from the tuner’s otherwise unbalanced circuitry.