Is an unbalanced preamp a bad thing?

I am borrowing a Conrad Johnson preamplifier and it sounds very nice but to my surprise I couldn't use XLR cables.  If I wanted this preamplifier I would have to go through all the torture of selecting new cables versus XLR cables I already have.

Fortunately I don't need extended Cable runs and it's supposed to be a really good preamp so maybe I'll buy one.

Also borrowing some very nice speakers called Magico and will listen to these for a while until I have to give them back.  It's nice having friends who have Nice gear.

Like everything it depends - in this case, especially on the downstream component and how it handles SE vs. balanced input signals. Sometimes there is an extra stage for SE vs. XLR (or vice versa) that the signal has to pass through. It can be an opamp or transformer, which is definitely going to impact the sound. Best is a differential input stage, which doesn’t care whether the signal is SE or balanced.

If cost is not an object and you can avoid the pitfalls, fully balanced has advantages, but it requires doubling the circuitry and (almost) twice the expense.

For headphone amps I find balanced drive to be extremely effective, because it grants +6dB extra gain, up to 4 times the power, and double the slew rate along with common mode noise rejection. And Stax/electrostatic headphone amps have to be balanced anyways, and they sound the best (for other reasons too). For straight preamps, the advantages of balanced drive are going to be of much more subtle impact.

Voice from the past...RCA connectors have been working fine since the 1940s. I'm going to guess it's got a few more decades left in it. 

You can always get some Jensen RCA to XLR convertors.

B

Voice from the past...RCA connectors have been working fine since the 1940s. I'm going to guess it's got a few more decades left in it. 

😀 XLRs have been around almost as long- back in the 1940s though they used barrier strips.