OMG! Please don’t talk down to me. I originally assumed you were referring to the case where you feed a signal from a SE component (NOT a phono cartridge) to a balanced component. For example, a SE phono stage into a balanced linestage. You can’t directly drive a balanced device in balanced mode with an inherently SE device. As we all know, a phono cartridge is inherently a balanced device, so what I wrote does not apply.
which turntable or how to convert to balanced phono setup?
Im a total noob with vinyl please bear with me,
I just purchased a b stock Teac PE 505 balanced phono preamp to replace a buggy Gold Note PH5
im looking for a turntable upgrade to run balanced with an mc cart
so aside from those tables that have xlrs outs,
is it just a matter of finding a din to xlr tone arm cable? or is there more to it?
I dont understand the differences between tables like mine that have RCA outs (technics 1200 gr2)
and those with "tone arm" cables
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From the beginning, this thread has been about the Teac PE 505 balanced phono preamp. I’ve not spoken about anything other than phono in this thread and here’s what I wrote back on 6/18 - the second comment in this thread: Most turntables/pickup arms provide inherently balanced outputs although - strictly speaking - they’re really floating. That is, they have a separate + and - for each channel, and a ground that is not connected to either. (That’s the purpose of the separate ground wire.) Hopefully you now understand that in the Teac the RCAs do not "ground the negative phase of a balanced signal inside the chassis and convert to SE operation," contrary to your claim. |
The words you quote in italics are of course correct but have nothing whatever to do with the PE505 specifically and prove nothing. However, I finally found the owners manual on line. It is very dumbed down, but if you look at the diagrams on the right hand side of page 9 in the English language section, there is a hint that you are correct. Also, on the page with specs, the gain is not different when you feed the RCAs vs the XLRs. This too suggests you are correct. Note the caveat on page 9 about feeding the balanced inputs from a TT wherein the outputs are grounded to the TT or tonearm. As they say and I said, this negates the balanced operation. |
I thought the same! A component such as the PE 505 really deserves a better manual.
Oh yes, of course, absolutely agreed. I'm glad we were able to clarify this matter for the OP and everyone else, @lewm and I wish you the best. |
@lewm Either I'm misunderstanding this or its incorrect. At no point in our amps does the signal go single-ended. What we do instead with the RCA connection is the center pin connects to pin 2 of the XLR and the RCA ground is pin 1 of the XLR. We then ground pin 3 of the XLR if the RCA is being used instead of the XLR. A differential amplifier, present at the input of all our circuits, then converts a single-ended signal from the RCA to balanced operation. No transformer needed. The differential amplifier doesn't care much if the input is single-ended or balanced, since it simply amplifies what is different between its two inputs. If one side is ground, so be it.
If the circuit and source are true balanced, and if one side of the source is grounded or not will make no difference to the gain if the preamplifier is really balanced. The reason is the same amount of Voltage is applied to the input in either case. So if a phono cartridge has 1mV output, if that 1mV is applied to a balanced circuit via an RCA connectors (so the inverting input of the balanced circuit is not used) the gain will be the same unless the balanced circuit is not differential or having a transformer coupled input. Since the CMRR our our phono section inputs is rather high the signal level at the output of the preamp will be unchanged whether the input is balanced or not. There is a common misconception that a balanced signal will be 6dB more gain but if the source is AES48 compliant that simply is false.
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