How will XLR cables vs RCA effect a phono pre

Atmasphere"If the preamp is not balanced then IMO there is only marginal advantage to using a balanced cable. "

I agree.. SO the big question is.... Are we talking about a BALANCED design so to speak which seems to me to be the same on the end of the turntable anyway being its RCA Jacked, or XLR Jacked... Or are we confusing that everyone must Modify their turntable to Wire it VIA XLR?

I mean it kinda seems to me that from the Cartridge to Phono amp there is not really any wiring difference to do here in order to go XLR, and most tables will have to be modified connecting that extra wire, but to what inside the arm? Or simply just shorting pins 1 & 3 to simply interface the input circuit on a "Balanced" phono stage.. Which simply to me would mean you can still have a standard wired RCA style turntable, and just short RCA ground via an XLR adaptor or something to your existing RCA JACK in order to keep everybody from running out and re-wiring (somewhat expensively) their arm and adding XLR jacks to the back of a turntable.

Anyway due to the subject matter I am simply trying to establish a ground point here that its possible you don't need an XLR equipt and wired turntable to acheive the connection at a (Fully balanced) Phono stage.

Hi Undertow, you do **not** have to modify the tone arm. Most arms are already set up as balanced sources, even the lowly BSRs, Garrards and Duals of yesteryear.

You do have to jump through some hurdles with the air-bearing straight tracking arms, as they have so many lateral tracking mass problems that the designers usually eliminate the 5th wire that is common to all other arms.

The 5th wire is the ground, and is why the arm needs no mods.

The cartridge outputs are the twisted pair that runs inside the balanced line. The 5th wire, ground, is the shield of the cable, and ties to pin 1 of the XLR. So the shields of the cables are both tied to the same point at the arm end of the cable (ground).

Note that in this hookup scenario, there is no signal on the shield. So the arm itself shields the signal from the cartridge, and once through the bearing system, the interconnect cable takes over the shielding from there.

If the cable passes through a noise source, the noise will be impinged on both plus and minus signals in the same way, and rejected once arriving at the preamp input. In this way noise is reduced. In a single-ended system this noise would be amplified by the phono preamp.

Thanks for clearing up the gain issue. I was mistaken. Anyway, one of the pre-requisites for any phono stage I buy in the future is that it have balanced ins and outs. Currently, I like the flexibility of the EAR 324 which is similar to my GCPH but it lacks balanced inputs. Hopefully if Ayre releases a PX-R it will have the flexibility of external gain and loading adjustments.

There still seems to be some confusion, despite Ralph's clarification. If your phono stage has truly balanced circuitry inside, from input to output, then you would be remiss if you did not use an XLR connector where pins 2 and 3 carry the signal from the "hot" and "ground" pins of the cartridge, respectively, and the shield of the tonearm wire is connected to pin 1. However, MANY phono stages sport XLR inputs but are NOT balanced internally. Many manufacturers publish statements on this subject that are confusing, if not deliberately misleading, so be careful in this regard. If the internal circuitry is single-ended (not balanced), there is no real benefit to the XLR. The only difference between using the available XLR input vs the RCA input would be the possible tiny difference due to the difference in the two types of connectors. A truly balanced circuit will give you increased S/N and gain vs an SE circuit. Examples of truly balanced phono sections are Ayre, Atma-sphere, Raul's Phonolinepreamp, Aesthetix Io and maybe the Rhea, Pass Xono, I think, and I am sure there are more. The rest are pretenders.

I read a blurb earlier this week on a phono section that stated in two consecutive bulleted statements that it was "balanced" and then that it had an "SE RIAA section", as if each was a feature of the device. In plain language, it is not a balanced device. Even the dealer was confused on that one.