But I still cannot see how it can be fully balanced if it has only phonos for inputs. If phonos can be balanced, why does it need XLRs for outputs? And why do ARC included XLRs in and out on the Ref pre-amps? And on earlier phono amps like the PH2 that I used with pleasure for 20 years.
@clearthinker The tonearm cable from turntable has a separate grounding wire. Instead of duplicating the ground wire per L+R channels (dual 3-pin XLRs), here it’s common for both channels. That’s what the grounding lug next to the input RCAs is for. So IF they wired the tonearm RCAs with "+" and "-" balanced signals on pin and barrel, with ground on the separate grounding wire, and with the ARC taking it in this way (isolating the barrel signal carrying "-" from the chassis), it could be fully balanced over RCAs. There are enough separate conductors. BUT I have no idea if this is how it’s actually setup; it depends on your tonearm cable’s wiring, and I’m not sure this is even a good idea - exposing the "-" signal on an exposed RCA barrel kind of defeats the purpose of common mode noise rejection.
Even if it’s NOT a balanced signal coming in, there can still be benefit from using a differential input stage and running everything downstream fully balanced, IMO (like Stax headphone amps).