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Issues With McIntosh C2200 Balanced Input

I have a Wadia 23 CD player, a McIntosh C2200 preamp, and a pair of McIntosh MC2102 amps. I had been using unbalanced interconnects between all components. I switched to balanced interconnects and seem to have lost about half my gain. The lose is between the CD player and preamp.

I called McIntosh technical support, they thought I could have lost a pin on my balanced connectors, but the odd thing is, both channels are equally affected. Someone else suggested this could just be the architecture of the McIntosh preamp.

I'm wondering if any other C2200 owners are experiencing something similar.

Thanks!
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rontube
44 posts
 
Check the pin out on your units. The pins are not all assigned the same. USA and Japanese components may not have the same pin out so you will have to modify one end of the balanced cable to translate at full level.

Ron-C
rwwear
2,867 posts
 
The European and Japanese pin configuration simply uses pin 3 for positive instead of pin 2. This simply reverses phase and will not cause signal loss.
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cocozhou OP
7 posts
 

So the question remains, is this simply the McIntosh architecture, something to do with the grounding not being a true balanced input or is the CD player hosed?
rwwear
2,867 posts
 
Does the Wadia have a volume control that is bypassed when using the balanced outs? Another possibility is the Wadia lowers the gain from the balanced outs to keep from overdriving the inputs of a preamp that is balanced and the the Mac may not be truly balanced.
aball
2,016 posts
 
Being a balanced or unbalanced design should not make a difference. I have never had this problem with my McIntosh preamps and I have used them with balanced and unbalanced CD players. I think it is something related to the Wadia than the McIntosh but I don't know Wadias enough to say.
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