Yes this is a BAL vs UNBAL conversation. Real quick ill just say BAL is for long cable runs, that's why you always see them used in professional stage gear. The balanced circuit is a more complex one and for home audio, depending on the engineer/designer they my choose to keep the circuit more basic for whatever reasons...In my listening over 35 years I do not think balanced "sounds better" than unbalanced. Many quality components have one or the other or both? Turntables are simple therefore you see mostly unbalanced outputs. Why take something that works great and make it complex by adding balanced circuitry? IMHO.
Why so few balanced phono inputs?
I have been through the posts regarding whether a phono cartridge is a balanced connection or not and per Ralph Karsten etc. I agree it is balanced. It finally hit me why someone like Pass Labs doesn't offer a balanced input on a balanced unit (I wanted one until I saw they only had rca)...There are so few turntables that offer a balanced out connection. I got mine from VPI and it was easily switched and was a huge improvement... but are there other TT brands that offer a balanced connection? I was in a high end shop the other day...first time in a while... and saw none. Even SME didn't show one as an option on their site. Not trying to open the balanced vs. single-ended thing but maybe it is endemmic to the conversation. Thanks
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As long as the ground wire is not touching the cold side of the RCA connector, the signal is still "balanced". It's how you wire it not what connector is used. An XLR connector has 3 pins: hot, cold, and ground. If you use RCA, the shell is cold and center pin is hot and the ground wire is, well, ground. With that in mind, you can wire however you want or use XLR adapters. If you want to keep the entire signal path BAL all the way to the power amp output then you need balanced circuits in your phono stage to line stage to power amp. . |
Any phono cable can be easily converted into a balanced one. Just snip off the RCA's off and solder the two cable leads onto XLR's. Not all balanced phono amps are more complicated than single ended---in depends on how it is implemented. EAR's Tim Paravicini uses transformers at the inputs and outputs of his balanced connections. |
Fully Balanced is IMO the only way to play Vinyl, All our BIG phono preamps are fully balanced from input to output. Even the little Liberty B2B-1 is configured so it can be used as a fully balanced preamp - you'd of course need two of them, one for each channel. Liberty B2B-1 Good Listening Peter |
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