Phono Pre-amp with XLR

Tdaudio, If you read Ralph's (Atma-sphere) post and then read mine from yesterday, you will find a remarkable confluence. I have been using an MP1 for about 14 years now. I think some balanced phono stages offer RCA phono inputs because, as Ralph indicated, the world has not beaten a path to his door. Some other manufacturers fear that offering XLR inputs will frighten off persons who have typical RCA-terminated phono cables. I like that Ralph is a man of principle and won't compromise his design by offering an inferior connection to a balanced circuit.

I'm wearing an XLR costume for halloween just to frighten people. Male.

What would be more frightening is if you encounter another male dressed as a female XLR. That would be decidedly unbalanced.

Tdaudio, if the preamp is differential, but you only drive one input, perhaps the non-inverting input (with the other input being tied to ground, where the minus output of the cartridge is also tied), the gain will be exactly the same as if you were driving both inputs, assuming the source to be the same cartridge in both cases. What you loose is the cable immunity (tonal neutrality) and rejection of noise in the cable.

While I do think that true balanced phono amps are a good thing. This because with MC the signal is very low and you can use all the help you can get in amplifying the signal with getting increasing the noise level. However making a balanced amp is more expensive since you will need almost twice the components.

Also in pro audio almost no equipment is truly balanced they just use a RCA/XLR conversion at the in and outputs of amps. This is done so they can use longer cables.

In home audio you will often see the same. XLR inputs the an IC that converts the signal into non balanced. To me this is pointless since almost no one uses long cables in home audio. If a non balanced amp has XLR inputs I think it should say this in the manual. Otherwise people might think that any amp with XLR inputs is also balanced.