xlr vs rca

If you care to be more specific about where he states this I would be happy to read it, but the link you gave has 10 papers on it and I don't care to read all of them trying to find it.

Herman, I have never seen a tube preamp or amp that achieves balanced operation using completely discrete amplification for the plus and minus halves of the signal. I wondered if you had, and I guess not. BAT most certainly does balanced operation the same way Atma-sphere does. I think to do balanced operation without the differential topology would be a disaster because of the difficulty matching Rp, mu, and Gm for two completely disconnected sets of tubes. At least in differential topology the current can be held constant for the two halves of the circuit by using a CCS in the cathode of the dual-diff amplifier, and the current on one side will go down by the exact complement of the increase in current on the upgoing side. The only place I have seen balanced without differential is in the context of using an IC or a 2-section bipolar transistor, which can have incredibly closely matched sections.

Yes, I know an MC cartridge is an inherently balanced signal generator if hooked up to a balanced input. I guess I was thinking of a single-ended signal from a cdp or other source.

I understand the use of the CCS but I don't see where this makes the circuit immune to differences in the tubes. It's been awhile since I've studied them but as I recall any difference in the components will be reflected in the output.

Try the Whitlock paper directed at students - Page 9 and 10. Although as the saying goes - you can lead a horse to water but...

Maybe I missed it but I don't see where it says anything about power supply leakage. What do you mean by that?

The insidious kind is when a power supply leakage affects ground on a device which adds modulated noise on your cabling as a function of power demands. The way to reduce this is to go balanced (so that the ground loop is induced equally in both positive and negative signals).

In order to affect a ground loop whatever is doing it has to change the potential of the ground. How does a power supply do that?

I think I'll bow out of this discussion. I'm told that there is no way the signals aren't separate when clearly they interact in the diff amps and then some vague references to leakage. It is really all pointless. Here's the bottom line. Those of you in the balanced camp can go on and on about all of the reasons why balanced "should" sound better than SE. You are correct; it should. There is a laundry list of reasons why CDs should sound better than vinyl. The simple truth is it does not. My ears and those of many others say that the best we've ever heard consists of SET amps coupled to high efficiency horns. I don't care what the textbooks say. I don't care how it measures. All I care about is how it sounds. Unfortunately there is no way to make that comparison via the internet.