Balanced cables

Warren Gehl to my knowledge does some very limited design work for ARC and is key in QC by reportedly listening to every piece of gear hooked up to his reference system of a Ref 6 and Ref 150se and some old, large Magnepans before the piece leaves the factory. It was, however, Ward Fiebiger who took over the reigns from Bill Johnson in the actual engineering/circuit layouts of ARC's top-level gear including the Ref series of preamps and amps. Now does that make a difference? Probably not. Surely Warren knows enough to answer the question being posed here.

Warren has made a lot of contributions to the sound of ARC and little of it has been to circuitry- mostly vibration control, tube choice and similar. Bill hired him for his ears as he was/is very astute.

Ward (RIP) may have been influenced by the Italians who have since learned to let the company do what it does best. I'm not sure where your amp sits in this since it is still current.

I have seen some pretty expensive cables over at ARC (they are a 1/2 hour drive from here) so I've had pretty good reason to suspect that they didn't support the balanced standard (else you wouldn't need the pricey cables). Here is a nice bit about how balanced line works, from the Rane (a popular pro audio manufacturer) website:

http://www.rane.com/note110.html

@stringreen ,

Are you listening to lps, cds or both when you experience the metallic sound? If it's only on lps, (if you're still running the Classic platter), I'd suggest you try a nice TT mat...Funk Firm 5mm.

Good luck.

@fsonicsmith
Good points. Though, I’d assume most reviewers don’t have XLR on hand because only a small subset of gear actually *requires* it.

In the case of components which offer both XLR and RCA inputs and/or outputs, it’s probably worthwhile to understand the circuit topology. I don’t know what "pseudo balanced" means. But in many cases (such as in my EAR Yoshino gear), the balanced connectors are offered as a presumed convenience only. For example, my EAR 890 amplifier has balanced and unbalanced inputs selected by a switch. And when I switch to the RCA inputs, then the input transformers are bypassed. Transformers are probably the best way to convert balanced to unbalanced or vice versa, but they have a sound. So now if I prefer transparency, then I should use the unbalanced inputs. But if I prefer the additional transformer coloration, then I could use the XLR. One is not definitively "better", and the only thing to do is try it both ways.

One possible benefit in general of balanced is the elimination of any potential ground loops.

Just because you have XLR inputs and outputs on a piece of equipment does not mean you are running in true balance. Check with the maker of the equipment to see if they are true balance from input to output. If they are then i feel the XLR balanced cables will make a difference. If not do not waste your money.

@68pete

That was exactly my point. Also depends on the source. If a phono, which in MOST cases run single ended in, then I don’t see a reason to favor converting back and forth from single ended to balanced downstream in the chain vs just staying single ended all the way.... assuming you don’t have a mixture of true balanced devices and single ended devices in the chain - which itself is a little weird.