Balanced XLR to RCA Adapters: Good or Bad?

The manual for the Aesthetix IO indicates on page 8 that its front-end stage is single-ended, with the second stage converting to balanced, and the rest of the signal path, apparently including a passive equalization circuit, being balanced.

So a "fake" xlr input does not necessarily equate with low quality, and may be provided simply as a convenience feature.

A phono stage could use RCAs as balanced inputs if they float the ground.

True enough.

Best regards,
-- Al

I'm going to leave the part about whether balanced is better than single ended at the tonearm for those who enjoy mental masturbation.

As for using the adapters, Doug is right on. You will hear the degradation even if you use Rat Shack lamp cord. Even the good ones build for Doug have a sonic impact. Don't think so? Cut the connectors off your cables and direct wire them, then come back and tell me that short piece of metal can't possible make a difference.

My experience is that adpators are not a good idea- they will rob the system of life and impact. So my vote is to change the connectors on the end of the cable.

The advantage of running balanced in the phono is (especially if you run LOMC) that the cable will have no audible effect on the sound (and also the Common Mode Rejection Ratio of noise that occurs at the input if the phono section is balanced). I've seen a lot of audiophile search for just the right-sounding cable in the phono rig; with balanced the only thing to do is make sure the cable is wired right. If so you will hear no difference between a cheap cable and an expensive one.

You would think that this is a major boon but I am constantly surprised at how many audiophiles would rather have the talking points of using a more expensive cable.

I for one wonder why the SE standard is not BNC instead of RCA. BNC would seem to have the potential to sound better.

Yes, RCA's leave a lot to be desired, including the fact that during insertion the signal pin makes contact before the ground sleeve, and during extraction breaks contact after the ground sleeve. Which means that a very large transient might be put into the system if the cable is accidentally yanked out while everything is powered up. But the superior impedance control that BNC's provide is irrelevant at analog audio frequencies, and I suppose they cost a bit more. The main reason BNC's are not used for single-ended phono signals, though, is probably just that RCA's became the de facto standard many moons ago, and no one wants to step out of line. My vintage Mark Levinson ML-1 uses Camac Lemo connectors, which are far superior to RCA's, but forces the use of unconventional cables having Lemo's on one end and RCA's on the other end, or else (gasp) Lemo to RCA adapters, which is what I use.

Best regards,
-- Al