What's the benefit of balanced tonearm cables?
erik_squires "I've never heard of blanced cabled cancelling cable artifacts."It's not the balanced cabling so much, as using balanced connections into a differential amplifier. By definition, a differential amp should negate any effect of the cable. |
john_tracy "He may have meant a balanced line with RCA termination. That is how I run my set-up. This presupposes that the RCA input of your phono pre is balanced ..."Yes, this can certainly be done, and it's worth repeating because many audiophiles associate XLR connectors with balanced operation and RCA connectors as being always unbalanced. While that's often true, the truth is that it is the circuit - and not the connector - that defines whether or not a circuit is balanced. In fact some phono preamps, including the ARC Ref Phono - which is a balanced, differential amplifier - offer only RCA connectors on the inputs. But provided that its RCA inputs are connected using a ground wire separate from the individual channel grounds, you'll have a fully balanced connection between a typical phono cartridge and the phono preamp. (I've omitted from this discussion the debate about how ARC grounds its balanced connections to the chassis. That a debate for another day. ) |
