Balanced XLR vs RCA for phono stage

@ditusa the article from Ralph was interesting and answers the question I asked about the benefits of XLR in home audio. Comments about cable auditioning were also interesting.

Comparing the same cable RCA vs XLR may also be interesting.

macg19

GoldNote said they are AES compliant 

That is very interesting, and doesn't seem to be consistent with the specs you quoted:

Unbalanced RCA @ 2V and balanced XLR @ 4V

I'm not familiar with this component so I can only say that I'm puzzled.

I just have to comment on the article’s introduction: “…continual and perpetual difficulty of hooking up audio equipment without suffering through all sorts of bizarre noises, hums, buzzes, whistles, etc….”.

In forty years of using single ended interconnects I have never experienced any of these symptoms, ever. I tested dozens of interconnects and components over that time.

I’m not refuting the paper. I’m just saying it is overstating the problem.

I went through a major upgrade a few years ago and did an A/B comparison on my audio equipment and found virtually no sonic benefit, but the cost was 2x to go to XLR. So for me that was $5K —> $10K. I had to think long and hard about spending $5K for no sonic improvement. In the end, I went ahead and did it. It gives me peace of mind, and XLR are becoming much more common… and I can afford it. if I was younger and was stretching to get the very best components I could afford… I would have just stuck with RCA… and upgraded when I could afford it.

@ghdprentice the reference was pro audio, long run mic cables etc.

Thanks. Then a completely different application and not relevant.