XLR waste of time ?

Dear Gallant_Diva, You wrote, "XLR circuit has two to three times the complexity of RCA, not to take away the transparency and purity of the signal."

That is the old argument for those who believe that single-ended circuits are per se superior to balanced ones, because of lower parts count. I think the argument is spurious, and I could tell you why but it would take too long. Anyway, in the case of the last few posts, we were talking about the relative merits of the two types of connectors (XLR v RCA), as connectors.

Atmasphere,

You gloss over many things that are not obvious (or intuitive) to the casual reader. I'm not restating to tell *you* anything you do not already know - just want to make sure everyone following understands the differences (subtle, yet very important). This topic seems to cause a bit of confusion.

A "balanced" cable has nothing to do with the termination (XLR, RCA, bare wire, etc.). As Ralph said, a single "balanced" cable has a specific wire geometry - two identical leads (one positive, one negative) surrounded by a shield (ground). *Usually" a balanced cable is terminated by XLR, but you can't be sure without looking "under the covers". But this is the same with amp / pre-amp design - you can't assume it's a balanced design just because it has XLR inputs / outputs.

While many arms ship with a 5-pin DIN connector (and makes it easy to swap in a truly "balanced" cable), my OL Silver did not. I did not want a DIN connector as I wanted a continuous piece of copper from my cartridge clips to my XLR terminations. Unfortunately, OL does not ship the Silver with a "balanced" cable, even when requesting a "balanced" tonearm (they just slap on XLR terminations on their single-ended wire, then charge you £330.43 plus £21.74 for new XLRs fitting for their Linear Flow 2 cable if you want it truly balanced).

Let me rephrase the question: What XLR connectors do you (or anyone) view as equal to or better than an Eichmann silver RCA?

Ignoring for a moment the preference for exotic materials such as silver and gold (and equipment failure, contact or design issues), one can say,in general, that ANY XLR connection will normally perform at least equal to and often better than RCA.

Any good quality XLR from a guitar store (such as Mogami) should at least equal the best RCA.

Jimjoyce25, the standard Neutrik will do the job. Its available in both silver and gold versions. There are of course exotic XLR connector varieties, but IMO/IME, if the balanced line is set up correctly, they don't make any significant difference.

One way of looking at this- RCA single-ended cables strive towards a sort of goal of perfection. If the balanced connection is set up right, its already there; IOW the RCA will always be falling slightly short of what any balanced cable can do.

This is not only because of the balanced aspect but also because of the fact that if balanced lines are set up correctly, they are *low impedance*. Low output moving coils play perfectly into this; nearly all are 'low impedance', i.e. they can *drive* a load of 600 ohms (or less) and sound **better** for doing so.

It sounds as if the conclusions being voiced here are based more on philosophical creed, rather than on experimentation----at least not recent experimentation.

Since either type of connector can be used on either type of cable, the comparison should be pretty straightforward.

I've done the direct comparison of Eichmann silver vs copper RCAs. and in a good enough system, the superiority of the silver is quite clear.

I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has done a similarly direct comparison between the Eichmann silvers and high-quality XLR connectors.