Should people with no turntable or reel to reel be considered audiophiles?

What is the advantage of a balanced input or output for phono stages?

Good question. When you find one let us know.

Sokohgear, I said that not glupson. I also said that audiophiles like to manage their own gear. I did not say that they but new gear every five minutes. Only Mike L seems to do that. We clean and set up our own turntables, change tubes, make our own cables if we are smart audiophiles and spend more time listening to music than most people.
We also have a tendency to appreciate sports cars and bicycles. I have a new Specialized Diverge. Built it up Campy Super Record 12 speed EPS Disc with Fulcrum tubeless wheels and Hutchinson Sector 32 tires. Ugly bike , heavenly ride. My old Merlin will have to do swim suit duty.
What an FN record, The Crane Wife by the Decemberists. The whole house is bouncing 🥴

Are you an audiophile when you ONLY use an MM cartridge, i.e. don't care to use 'highly advanced' MC cartridges? 

Kind of don't care to rock up with a 911 and showing up in an SUV thing...🤔 

Like real audiophiles use MCs... and not MM/MI/MF 'things'... 😥 

Michélle 🇿🇦 

Separate question that I haven’t been able to get answered in another discussion about phono stages (not sure why). What is the advantage of a balanced input or output for phono stages? Is that feature only available on very expensive models? Is there a special MC voltage where this feature is helpful?

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I must admit that designers of ultra expensive High-End audio equipment are very slow and probably the last people in audio who came into balanced (XLR) connection, because this is the ONLY TYPE of connectors (inputs,outputs,interconnect) professionals are using for ages. Come to any studio and you will never find any RCA unbalanced cables, ONLY XLR (Balanced) for everything including microphones.

You can run only balanced cables from MC cartridge to the speakers like Zu Audio Druid (they have XLR port too)

More very nice XLR cables from ZU for audiophiles 

While the conventional hi-fi RCA cables must be short (under 1.5m ), the XLR cables can be very long.

chakster
I must admit that designers of ultra expensive High-End audio equipment are very slow and probably the last people in audio who came into balanced (XLR) connection, because this is the ONLY TYPE of connectors (inputs,outputs,interconnect) professionals are using for ages. Come to any studio and you will never find any RCA unbalanced cables, ONLY XLR (Balanced) for everything including microphones.

>>>>>Huh? The pros only use XLR?  For that reason I’m out.