Phono Stage with XLR outs

MOD/Wright

OP, since you are leaning towards a warmer sounding/tube presentation, this might not be your cup of tea BUT I've been down this journey and have seen how deep the rabbit hole can get. I ended up buying the Micheal Fidler MC Pro phonostage, which falls well within your budget.

It is not tubed but offers RCA and XLR outputs. If noise and distortion matters to you, you won't find any on his phonostages. They are the best measured phonostages you will encounter. The guy is a true genius. Michael has shifted his attention to MM phonostages but I believe he might have MC options available in his Spartan series. You will be hard pressed to find anything but stellar reviews on ALL his phonostages. It is the only gear he builds.

I have mine paired with a Michell Orbe SE turntable, Kiseki Purple Heart LOMC cartridge which runs through a Benchmark LA4 preamp (very transparent with vanishingly low noise and distortion) into Audio Research monoblocks which gives me the tube smoothness. I can't be happier.

Google "Michael Fidler MC Pro" to find his website and take the time to read his extensive interpretations on his design philosophy. Also, take the time to click on the many reviews posted on his website for his phonostages. 

@ohmywatt I just googled it and visited their website. The phono amp you’re referring to has been discontinued.

As I mentioned above, I have a Whest Two.2 inbound. Should be receiving it today. 
I will post my thoughts when I get few hours on it. 

@lewm, @lalitk running Sutherland KC Vibe Mk2 using RCA cables out of the Vibe into Boulder with Cardas RCA to XLR adapters…something is off. It just doesn’t sound right. It feels like certain frequencies are compressed. I tested the setup with my Marantz AVR and Focal Aria system and it sounds fabulous. I am very familiar with the sound of the Vibe and 20/20 as I owned these and they are amazing phono stages. I think the RCA to XLR adapters together with the RCA cables and KC Vibe phono just don’t jive with the boulder amp. It’s very unfortunate because the Sutherland stuff is really nice. This also puts a big question mark on any single ended phono in the context of my system configuration. I won’t be taking chances and will just opt for a phono stage with a balanced circuit. If Whest doesn’t work out, I might just pick up the McIntosh. 

Does Boulder use the convention that pin2 of the XLR is the positive phase or hot  from an SE reference? Most do, but I have read that not every company does it that way. Like I said earlier, the Cardas adapters are of very high quality and based on my own use of them they do use Pin2 as hot, but "no adapter " is better.

Not to rain on Whest in any way, but from my reading Whest derives the balanced outputs by adding a device at the end of their otherwise SE circuit. (I don’t think it’s a transformer, but they are a bit mysterious on that subject.) I recall on my old Sony SACD player, the best one they made (SCD777?), they too used an add-on circuit to convert SE to XLR balanced out.  The SE outputs always sounded better to my ears.