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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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rwwear
2,847 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?
rwwear
2,847 posts
 
Does the Wadia have a volume control that is bypassed when using the balanced outs? Another possibility is the Wadia lowers the gain from the balanced outs to keep from overdriving the inputs of a preamp that is balanced and the the Mac may not be truly balanced.
aball
2,016 posts
 
Being a balanced or unbalanced design should not make a difference. I have never had this problem with my McIntosh preamps and I have used them with balanced and unbalanced CD players. I think it is something related to the Wadia than the McIntosh but I don't know Wadias enough to say.
woodturner
2 posts
 
I think there is a trim adjustment on the c 2200. Go into the setup menu and adjust the trim for the CD input to max.
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