What's the benefit of balanced tonearm cables?

The reason you go with balanced line is to eliminate any cable artifact, and by that I mean that you may have noticed that some cables sound better than others. That goes away with a properly set up balanced line system.

Balanced line and single-ended (RCA connections) are inherently incompatible. If you have one then its not the other. There is no such thing as pseudo balanced- that would simply be single-ended.

Now all phono cartridges happen to be balanced sources. Anyone saying otherwise is simply misinformed. The coils of the cartridge will work fine if they are hooked up backwards- all that happens is they are out of phase. If you did that with a single-ended source like a tuner you would get a huge buzz.

You know that little ground wire connection that most tone arms have? The one that other single-ended sources don't seem to need? That is there there to deal with the fact that a balanced source has a ground connection that is independent of the signal. Without it the balanced source, run as a single-ended source, will buzz. Its easy to hook up a cartridge in the balanced mode- in most cases you don't do anything with the tone arm wiring. Its usually about the interconnect cable that goes between the arm and the preamp. To do this, the preamp really does in fact have to have a balanced input.

The advantage of doing this is that the interconnect cable at the source of the stereo will not have any effect on the sound of the system. If you used a single-ended setup, the cable would have an effect and would have to be chosen with some care.

I've never heard of blanced cabled cancelling cable artifacts. What they DO measurably do is reject common mode noise.  EMI/RFI is often like that.  It induces a current in the same direction in both conductors which cancel each other out.

They may also have increased capacitance or inductance as a result of the construction.

For a tonearm, it's very interesting, since most cartridges are inherently balanced, using a balanced input stage could lead to less noise pick up, and better detail retreival.  COULD. No idea if true.

I use balanced (XLR) connections from the cartridge, through the pre, through the amp.  ....I can put my ear to the speaker cones on phono input and hear nothing...dead silence.  This contributes to the clarity/definition, and transparent listen experience.

erik_squires

"I've never heard of blanced cabled cancelling cable artifacts."

It's not the balanced cabling so much, as using balanced connections into a differential amplifier. By definition, a differential amp should negate any effect of the cable.

Balanced line and single-ended (RCA connections) are inherently incompatible. If you have one then its not the other. There is no such thing as pseudo balanced- that would simply be single-ended.

He may have meant a balanced line with RCA termination. That is how I run my set-up. This presupposes that the RCA input of your phono pre is balanced. In my case, with a transformer input, the XLR and RCA inputs are connected in parallel with a ground lift switch. Lifting the ground converts the RCA input to balanced. One could argue that the asymmetry of the RCA connection would introduce some differential noise. I would argue that the effect would be small at best.

My reason for this arrangement is convenience. I have a Rega style tonearm where the cables exit the mounting post and have to fit through the hole in the arm pod on my Nott. TT. Not keen to unsolder and solder XLRs every time I have to pull the tonearm.