joule electra vs. atma-sphere any input?

although a different beast altogether, the joule stargate transformer coupled monos aint too shabby either

pubul57
I just came across this old thread!

I have a Joule Electra preamp with my Atmasphere monoblocks and was thinking..... how much better could it get with balanced inputs from an MP1 or MP3?

What was your experience with the 2 in the sound setup?

Unfortunately, pubul57 passed away sometime ago. He was one of the great contributors to this forum and his presence here is greatly missed.

@brunomarsThe advantage of going balanced is that if it is done right, the interconnect cables won't play a big role in the sound of the system. If you've ever had to audition cables to get the right sound, you know what I mean.

I wouldn't doubt Ralph is correct.

But I discussed this with Jud many years ago.  His feeling was that balanced was critical with long cable runs, such as in studios, but not necessarily so with the lengths in most home audio systems.  He said to be truly balanced, as opposed to sudo-balanced, would require one additional gain stage and he didn't believe that was worth the trouble or cost.

So even today we find manufacturers on both sides of the question.