I'm wondering if anyone can chime in some help on my situation. My turntable is across the room from my preamp, which is next to my receiver. I would like to wire up the turntable cartridge to twisted pair cable and run it up/over/down to the preamp, which is unbalanced. The cable run would be approximately 40 feet. I would think that I could hook up a balanced to unbalanced converter of sorts next to the preamp to achieve this.
I’ve tested a few different passive and active devices, but the best that I’ve gotten is a pretty noisy signal. This seems like it should be an easy possibility, as I’m just transporting the balanced signal to the preamp, which is still doing the work of amplifying the signal and applying RIAA EQ. Microphone signals are very low voltage, but can run hundreds of feet over twisted pair cable with little to no noise. Thanks for the help in advance!
I would assume that if you have not moved the turntable close to your preamp, there must be some impediment, right? Otherwise that would be the easiest (and probably cheapest) solution.
When you say preamp, do you mean a full function preamp or a phonostage? Either way, you could bring that device only close to your turntable if doing the reverse were not allowed. Having the signal amplified to the line level or, even better, fully preamplified might allow a better rejection of noise, even if with RCA cables.
The devices that balance a signal exist, but they are working through transformers (which means that are not necessarily affordable). And, if I understood the scenario well, you'd need two (in between your unbalanced devices). If your cartridge is a MC and your tonearm is not a Rega, you might obtain a true balanced signal from your MC replacing your tonearm cable (using a DIN-XLR cable), entering a step up transformer with XLR inputs (Phasemation and Zesto make them) and then have the signal elevated to MM level while running on the long cables.
Not cheap and still imperfect, but better than your current layout.
If instead I failed to get the situation, could you please elaborate?