Aesthetix IO Eclipse

Chris -- I sold my Krell FPB600 and bought used Atmasphere MA-1 monoblocs here at A-gon, and got them upgraded at the factory. Although this was quite a change, and I was missing the bass at first (needed burn-in), I have not looked back. I am very happy with the OTL sound, and have only good things to say about Atmasphere and Ralph Karsten. The MA-1s turn out to be a good match with the Io.

Oldvinyl -- I use balanced JPS Superconductor FX cables from the Io to the amps. Not sure if better cables would make any big change. By the way I am now burning in the Io after the upgrade. Very interesting.

Dear Oldvinyl, I don't know why it was deleted, but I posted yesterday that I cannot understand why Aesthetix, who took the pains to design and develop the fully balanced phono section in the Io, and who charge a great deal of money for the resulting component, would ever have told you that "balanced input from the cartridge has no real advantage". Perhaps you misunderstood their representative or you were talking to a misinformed person. Of course, there ARE advantages, and it would be silly not to avail yourself of same, especially if noise is/was an issue. Make sure you use a true 3-conductor XLR interconnect between the tonearm and Io (one for positive phase, an identical one for negative phase, and a ground wire). I don't think there is anything controversial here, so lets hope that this second try does not get deleted.

Lewm - to be more precise, the Io is fully balanced after the input stage. Using RCA or XLR gets the same output, the rest of the amplification is fully balanced. The one advantage of a balanced input would be common mode noise rejection, assuming a fully differential input. My system does not have such noise problems with the Io phono stage. I found that using a well shielded phono cable eliminated any hum or coupled noise.

Lewm -- follow up; direct quote from the Aesthetix Io manual (from the Aesthetix web site):
The phono stage contains three main amplification sections and an output buffer section. The first section is a high gain, low noise, zero feedback single ended amplifier composed of two low-noise 12AX7 vacuum tubes. This then feeds a high gain, low noise differential amplifier (two 12AX7 vacuum tubes) which amplifies the signal and produces a complementary minus phase signal. Thus, the unit is balanced from the second amplification section through the output.
So, from this description, there is no advantage to using XLR or a balanced input from the cartridge.

It is my understanding that the first gain stage of the IO is single ended. Hence the reason it does not matter if the input is single ended or balanced. It could matter if an opamp was used on the balanced input but one leg is simply sent to ground, making it for all practical purposes identical to the single ended input. I do use the XLR input on my Eclipse but only because I think it is a better physical connection. There also may be an advantage in cable geometry with a balanced cable.

The original BAT phono stage also had a single ended input (the next two stages, like the IO, were balanced). Viktor K stated bringing in a balanced phono signal was not all positives. You could cancel differential noise but since you are using two wires for the signal (plus and minus) you are also bringing in twice as much inherent noise. At the time (15 years ago??) there might have been only one or two phono stages that were balanced end to end. I think the technology to use such a low voltage balanced signal properly was not easily available at the time.

Later (10 years ago??) BAT did implement a true balanced input, so Viktor did have a change of heart and was able to technically accomplish what he could not earlier. Apparently Jim White is still of the "old school" on a balanced input.