Maybe in general but *if* it's cartridge to step up transformer input I can't see why one wouldn't connect balanced given the choice.. No active or additional stages.
Phono cables - the most sensitive and critical cable in your system
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You can use RCAs if there is a separate ground post, which most arms have. The trick is the ground post is the shield for the cable (left and right channels) and corresponds to pin 1 of the XLR input on the preamp. The minus outputs of the cartridge connect to the barrel connection of the RCAs and the plus outputs are the center pins of the RCAs. On no account can the barrel of the RCA touch the shield of the cable. So now we have a twisted pair running inside a shield and this is a balanced line and works quite well!
We make a cable like this - it has RCAs on one end, with a separate ground lug for the ground post and XLRs at the other end. Easy peasy.
Its more than that!!
A HUGE reason for going balanced is to eliminate the cable as part of the 'sound' of the system. Think about how successfully microphone signals were able to travel in 150 (or more) feet of microphone cables back in 1958! This was over a decade and a half before the first high end audio interconnect cables were introduced and yet the better your system is, the better these (late 1950s) recordings sound.
The balanced line system is an exotic cable interface system where the transmitter and receiver does the heavy lifting to make things sound right rather than the cable. With single-ended cables its the other way 'round, which is why single-ended cables are so expensive with really variable results.
So put simply, you do balanced line, in particular in a tonearm hookup, to eliminate any coloration the tonearm cable has.
If there is any place in the system to get this right, its the phono: no matter how good your preamp/amp/speakers are there's no way you can make up for signal loss or coloration downstream!!
The obvious take away is the tonearm cable does not have to be expensive if its balanced and properly built. It can and will sound every bit as good as the most expensive or 'best' sounding single-ended cable.
CMRR - common mode rejection ratio is about interference, rather than noise. Or in other words, noise that is exactly the same at both inputs. The electronic noise from transistors, resistors etc is chaotic, meaning CMRR won't do anything with it. And since you have two sources of noise (positive amplification and negative amplification) the summed noise is sqrt2 higher compared to SE.
My head hurts it’s late in the day but I do understand the concepts of this. ail d my view tomorrow. but so far a bal cable to me makes good sense , but making sense is not always correct.
for now I think ralph is who I bet on
Let’s tomorrow
for now I think ralph is who I bet on
Let’s tomorrow
In my setup I have the turntables about 20’ from the speakers, behind the listening seats, over in a “zone of neutrality” along the right wall. The amps and preamp are near the speakers.
I use the short single ended Linn black arm cable (1.2m I think) to connect each TT to the phono preamp.
The phono preamp is connected to the preamp by a 25’ long pair of balanced Transparent Reference tuned by Transparent to match my phono preamp and preamp.
This gets the turntables away from the front wall and speakers. It uses single ended for a short run. And then takes advantage of balanced design for the long run.
Before I bought the Transparent Reference interconnects I had the turntables and phono preamp at the front behind speakers, with the phono preamp to preamp connection via a 1 m pair of balanced AQ Thunderbird Zeros.
To my ear the TTs sound better in their new location.
I use the short single ended Linn black arm cable (1.2m I think) to connect each TT to the phono preamp.
The phono preamp is connected to the preamp by a 25’ long pair of balanced Transparent Reference tuned by Transparent to match my phono preamp and preamp.
This gets the turntables away from the front wall and speakers. It uses single ended for a short run. And then takes advantage of balanced design for the long run.
Before I bought the Transparent Reference interconnects I had the turntables and phono preamp at the front behind speakers, with the phono preamp to preamp connection via a 1 m pair of balanced AQ Thunderbird Zeros.
To my ear the TTs sound better in their new location.
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Are you seriously saying you change to balanced connector onto a tonearm cable and all colorations/sound of the cable disappear and all cables then sound the same?
So to be understood clearly: both SE and BAL solutions can provide excellent noise performance. With current solutions even 1,41 times larger noise (sqrt2) balanced amps are super quiet. You are completely right about transformers offering gain with no noise penalty.
Just wanted to mention the noise difference, as not many people know that balanced is not always better per say
I did say exactly that earlier and I was serious.
There are the qualifications:
1) the phono section must be able to receive the balanced signal, while supporting AES48 (the balanced line connection standard wherein ground is ignored and only used for shielding)
2) the phono cables used (if doing comparisons) whether single-ended or balanced are low capacitance (the why of this is a different conversation as it pertains to the electrical resonance that occurs between any magnetic cartridge and the capacitance of the cable).
3) the tonearm internal wiring is not compromised by the arm tube being connected to the cartridge output in any way. This is rare but it does happen.
1. This very often is not the case. I think that every manufacturer tends to handle pin 1 differently.
High end audio history 101: Atma-Sphere was the first manufacturer in high end audio to support the use of balanced line for home audio use. To that end we made an amplifier (the MA-1, introduced in 1987) and a preamp (the MP-1, 1989) that both supported AES48 and in addition the low impedances often found in the studio- our assumption was that if there was an XLR output, it should be able to drive a 600 Ohm load if at line level.
You are correct WRT high end audio. So far high end audio has paid little attention to the balanced line standard, which is why audiophiles report variable results- often not as good as single-ended on that account.
I stated the correct way to do it that supports the standard. If its not done this way, expect the cable to make a difference in the sound. Also expect the manufacturer to not know what they hell they are doing!!
The standard is there for a reason. As I stated earlier, the balanced line system is a method of preventing the cables from introducing colorations, without the cable being particularly expensive to do so. Instead the source and the input of whatever is being driven do the heavy lifting. This system works: that is why LPs made in 1958 can sound so good. When the standard is ignored, the benefits of balanced operation are usually lost. That is why we are seeing really expensive balanced line interconnects in high end audio- the standard is being ignored. Whether by choice or ignorance of its existence I've not been able to sort out but either way its someone either being ignorant or lacking integrity. Sorry to put it in such harsh terms, but after 35 years of watching this nonsense I've grown tired of it.
Kudos, agreed completely. Nothing to add. Even besides that, there are other standards which are all over the place, eg I2S via HDMI.
Does it make sense to anyone that resistance loading preference would shift a bit with cable capacitance?
Moving to the low capacitance Lyra Phonopipe the loading on my Naim Superline for an SPU Royal N where a piano really sings has shifted from 220? to 160?. 10? lower and 20? higher, which are the values I can reach by paralleling the load plugs I have to hand, doesn’t quite hit the spot so well. The Phonopipe doesn’t leave anywhere to hide, unlike the Ortofon cable I was using before.
Moving to the low capacitance Lyra Phonopipe the loading on my Naim Superline for an SPU Royal N where a piano really sings has shifted from 220? to 160?. 10? lower and 20? higher, which are the values I can reach by paralleling the load plugs I have to hand, doesn’t quite hit the spot so well. The Phonopipe doesn’t leave anywhere to hide, unlike the Ortofon cable I was using before.
Yes. But could also be just a different cable sound changing your preferences for the loading. If the cable is new, you may find your preferences change again as the cable breaks in/settles down...
The tricky bit with cartridge loading is (if you are using a LOMC cartridge) that the loading does not affect the cartridge at audio frequencies, other than changing its mechanical compliance (because you are asking it to do more work).
The inductance of the cartridge is very low- so low that a squarewave passing thru it at audio frequencies looks like a perfect squarewave. But that inductance, in parallel with your tonearm cable (which has a capacitance) forms an electrical resonance that might be anywhere from 100KHz to 5MHz. It can also be as much as 30dB more powerful than the audio signal. 30dB is 1000x, so imagine half a Volt of Radio Frequency energy being injected directly into the front end of your phono section, which is supposed to be able to work with 0.5mV signals! The result can be distortion, which is perceived as brightness. You can also get excess ticks and pops as the phono section overloads.
The loading resistor detunes the electrical peak, getting rid of the RFI and the resulting distortion. But now you have a different problem: the load, which is 2 to 3 orders of magnitude lower resistance than the industry stock 47KOhms, is asking the cartridge to do 2-3 times more work! This could make the cantilever stiff enough that the cartridge is no longer in the mechanical resonance window of the arm and cartridge combo of 7-12Hz, and may impair its ability to trace high frequencies (since its harder to move).
If you find you need loading to tone down the high end, its a good bet the phono preamp designer did not take this phenomena into account, even though the behavior of an inductance in parallel with a capacitance is covered the first week or so during Electronics 101.
For this reason I very much doubt that the phono cable is causing a tonality merely on its own account; its more likely doing it because it has a different amount of capacitance. Occam's Razor- this is the simpler explanation if you are schooled in engineering.
Nice setup. I doubt the brand of (balanced) cable had anything to do with the sound; this is not your point I surmise.
Given that you are running 25' balanced from the phono preamp to the preamps/amps, I submit another reason for better sound, perhaps the most substantial one, is that the turntable is no longer between the speakers and is placed in 'a zone of neutrality' , where the result is less acoustic feed back, inflicted 'rumble' and taking 'cartridge/arm resonance' out of the conjunction.
Roughly, I have a similar setup where I have my TT/phono preamp and primary record cleaner in another room for isolation. I run balanced to the control preamp, Mac mini streamer, DAC and SACD player in listening room to a 'zone of isolation', and the 25' balanced to the mono amps near the speakers. The speaker wires are a meter. Consider all the sonic and $/£ benefits this gives!
I've never understood why 'audiophiles' have their sources between their speakers....Maybe because they see manufacturers displaying this way at shows?
I can’t see why anyone wants the phono pre and TT to not be as close as possible.
The phono pre output to preamp is not as bad and can be at a greater distance. but even this is effected if the phono pre can’t handle the longer run either
I think the between the speakers comes from needing or wanting shorter cables including the speaker cables.
The phono pre output to preamp is not as bad and can be at a greater distance. but even this is effected if the phono pre can’t handle the longer run either
I think the between the speakers comes from needing or wanting shorter cables including the speaker cables.
47K is the standard for loading whether MM or LOMC. FWIW, MM cartridges tend to have far greater need to be properly loaded, since their inductance is so much higher.
This is exactly why I think the phono section should be in the same box with the line stage.
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