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Issues With McIntosh C2200 Balanced Input

I have a Wadia 23 CD player, a McIntosh C2200 preamp, and a pair of McIntosh MC2102 amps. I had been using unbalanced interconnects between all components. I switched to balanced interconnects and seem to have lost about half my gain. The lose is between the CD player and preamp.

I called McIntosh technical support, they thought I could have lost a pin on my balanced connectors, but the odd thing is, both channels are equally affected. Someone else suggested this could just be the architecture of the McIntosh preamp.

I'm wondering if any other C2200 owners are experiencing something similar.

Thanks!
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myoussif
81 posts
 
well, last week I had the C2200 for a demo along with the MC402 and found that using the McIntosh amp I had to increase the volume by about 10-15 cliks to get the same volume level connecting the C2200 to my Gryphon Antileon Solos. I didn't know why. I was using all balanced and I never tried the single ended. I don't know if that helps.
hamr
56 posts
 
I am using balanced connections on a C2200 and a MC2000
driven by a SONY SCD-1 and have no gain issues at all. I have to think that your WADIA must have a very low output impediance in the balanced mode which the MAC may not like, or there is a switch internally that must be activated to run in balanced mode.
rontube
44 posts
 
Check the pin out on your units. The pins are not all assigned the same. USA and Japanese components may not have the same pin out so you will have to modify one end of the balanced cable to translate at full level.

Ron-C
rwwear
2,848 posts
 
The European and Japanese pin configuration simply uses pin 3 for positive instead of pin 2. This simply reverses phase and will not cause signal loss.
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cocozhou OP
7 posts
 

So the question remains, is this simply the McIntosh architecture, something to do with the grounding not being a true balanced input or is the CD player hosed?
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