Xlr vs rca phono (tonearm) cable

[ava1962]

Hello everyone
What kind of tonearm cable do you use with the P1 phono? XLR or RCA???
I use RCA (5pin to RCA), but I am curious if the XLR are better, because all the cartridges signal is balanced!
Any experience?

 

[adrianywu]

Hello everyone
What kind of tonearm cable do you use with the P1 phono? XLR or RCA???
I use RCA (5pin to RCA), but I am curious if the XLR are better, because all the cartridges signal is balanced!
Any experience?

The connector does not matter. It depends whether your preamp is fully balanced or not. The cartridge is floating (i.e. not referenced to ground) and so it can be fully balanced at the input if you ground the two connections through equal resistance (in my case 250 ohms on each side), or single ended if you ground one connection only. Since my preamp is fully balanced, even the RCA input is wired in such a way that the connections are balanced (basically the center pin of the RCA socket is linked to pin 2 of the XLR socket, and the outside connection of the RCA socket to pin 3 of the XLR socket).

 

[ava1962]

The connector does not matter. It depends whether your preamp is fully balanced or not. The cartridge is floating (i.e. not referenced to ground) and so it can be fully balanced at the input if you ground the two connections through equal resistance (in my case 250 ohms on each side), or single ended if you ground one connection only. Since my preamp is fully balanced, even the RCA input is wired in such a way that the connections are balanced (basically the center pin of the RCA socket is linked to pin 2 of the XLR socket, and the outside connection of the RCA socket to pin 3 of the XLR socket).

Thank you for your answer!

 

[zbub]

Do cartridges output balance signals? I thought because there's no reference to ground so by definition that's not balanced?

However, all 3 inputs I use on my P1 are all RCA. Have not tried XLR at all. 2 of the phono cables are part of the Shroeder and Linn arms. The last arm (Graham Phantom II) I am using Luminous Audio Silver Reference which I thought sounded quite great. I had Hovland tonearm cables before the Luminous.

 

[adrianywu]

Do cartridges output balance signals? I thought because there's no reference to ground so by definition that's not balanced?

However, all 3 inputs I use on my P1 are all RCA. Have not tried XLR at all. 2 of the phono cables are part of the Shroeder and Linn arms. The last arm (Graham Phantom II) I am using Luminous Audio Silver Reference which I thought sounded quite great. I had Hovland tonearm cables before the Luminous.

As Ralph Karsten has already mentioned, many sources are floating, including cartridges, tape heads and microphones. The signal they generate is the potential difference between two poles. No ground reference is necessary. Balanced is just a topology for amplifying a signal. It was invented to minimise noise so that a signal can be transmitted over long distances. If you link each pole of the source to ground at the amplifier input via an identical resistance, you are dividing the signal into two halves. Each half is then amplified at opposite phase (hence differential). If noise is introduced along the way, it will be in phase with one half and out of phase with the other half. When the two halves of the signal are recombined at the end, the noise cancels out.