Balanced preamp recommendations

Check out the McIntosh C200 if you like CJ sound. Stereophile thought it was just as good as the BAT VK-51SE but more practical and more attractive for less money.

Rushton,

Although I'm not an engineer that has technically examined this, I've anecdotally found a system whose components are ALL balanced to show slight but significantly higher performance than a system that uses a mix of balanced and single-ended components. I'm not an engineer, but I would guess that not having to deal with the voltage differences expected between balanced and single-ended inputs/outputs helps keep the overall signal from degrading as a result of need to step up/down a voltage for each respective component.

Check out Dave Davenport's line stage kit at Raleigh Audio. It is a transformer coupled balanced parallel feed differential design that has worked "magic" in my system. This kit (also available built) has been the subject of a series of articles in AudioXpress magazine. If you are interested, see it at www.kandkaudio.com

Hi Phil,

I acknowledge that what you say makes sense. Would seem so to me, too. What I've gathered, though, is that the interface for consumer balanced gear is not built to a consistent standard. As a result, you can get varying results when putting together gear from different manufacturers even if all the components are true balanced circuits. And, in some cases, one might actually prefer the sound of the single-ended connection even between two balanced components from the same manufacturer, depending on the rest of one's system, as Jonathan Valin reported as his experience with some components.

My only thought in my original post is that chosing equipment solely because it is balanced may not be the correct "critical path" to success in assembling a system.

I do appreciate your thoughts and sharing your experience.
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Rushton...yep, I have heard of inconsistencies in balanced interfaces as well. Something almost to the effect that European brands and North American brands reverse the positive and negative pins, so that in many cases mixing balanced gear from Europe and North America can result in phase-inversion. Then I heard of one instance where Jeff Rowland makes input-1 on his balanced preamps match the European "standard", whereas all the other inputs match the NA standard. And then I'm sure there are many examples of manufacturers just implementing whatever they happen to be used to.

But yes, I agree that choosing equipment solely because it is balanced is not the critical path, but certainly it is a legitimate consideration IMHO, particularly if by not going balanced forces you to use adaptors and such...