I do have a question -- if folks would be so kind -- about pro/cons on
using the rca line inputs - outputs versus the balanced I/O on some of
these equipment pieces -- I have no experience at all on the balance I/O
- thoughts?
There are several things to understand about balanced. I'll try to not make it too confusing.
There is this thing that is the balanced line standard. It is spelled out in the Audio Engineering Society (AES) file 48. If your equipment conforms to the standard, a fun thing happens- you can run longer interconnects and they don't have to be exotic (and exotically priced) to sound excellent.
Unfortunately many high end audio companies that offer true balanced equipment don't actually support that standard. The reason is that its hard (see points 2 and 3 below) and some companies don't seem to be aware that it exits.
As a result you'll see really variable comments ranging from mine- which usually read something like 'Once you've heard it set up right, there's simply no going back' to 'balanced is just a gimmick and offers no performance improvement at all'. The latter happens when the standards are ignored. So its important to check with the manufacturer to see if their equipment supports the standard.
In a nutshell, here's the standard:
1) pinout: pin 1 of the XLR is ground, pin 2 noninverting (in the US), pin 3 is inverting (in the US)
2) the output occurs between pins 2 and 3; pin 1 (ground) is ignored and is only used for shielding
3) the system is low impedance; a preamp supporting the standard should be easily able to drive 1000 ohms without frequency response or distortion problems.
FWIW, all cartridges made today are balanced sources. That is why turntables always have that funny 'ground wire' that no other 'single ended' sources seem to have. The ground wire is the shield. So if you have a turntable the signal can easily travel from the LP to the preamp input via a low impedance balanced line- and thus the signal will be more immune to the interconnect cable, making for greater transparency and lower noise to boot. Usually all that is required is to change out the interconnect cable.
An obvious advantage of balanced operation is that you can run long cables. 50 feet is no worries between preamp and amp so its possible to run monoblock amplifiers placed by the speakers and run really short speaker cables- which will ultimately help you with impact and definition. Once you've heard that greater definition, its hard to go back.
The most common myth about balanced line is that its more expensive and there are twice as many components. This is false. It does take more parts, but not twice as many- maybe about 50% more (unless the execution is poor). However your interconnect cables don't have to be as expensive. I think mine cost me about $150.00 for the pair and they are 30 feet long. In practice, the cheaper cables more than make up for the difference in price and quite often you can have greater performance to boot.
