Balanced or single ended phono stage?

John, there is no reference to ground when running the Liberty B2B-1 as a differential amplifier, Each end of the coil in the cartridge is connected its own amplifiers positive input, with their negative input tied to each other. The signal is fully differential from input to output.

Good Listening

Peter

I have an all Ayre system and am very happy...absolutely silent with great sound. They have wonderful customer support....I would buy Ayre again.

I do not think the type of output is nearly as important as the gain being apropriate for the cartridge.
Nor as important as the ability to alter the total impedance or capacitance.
Or if it has two inputs if that is needed...

Personally i go with how it sounds.. And do not even worry about if it is balanced or single ended.

The only reason I would waant a balanced over single ended is if for some reason I had to have a very long (20/30 feet long) interconnect wire between the phono box and the preamp.

The length of the cable is not relevant- balanced will sound better even if its only 6".

There are several advantages to balanced operation, particularly with a phono setup. First, the cartridge is a balanced source. That is why you have that separate ground wire when you run a phono single-ended, that ground wire that no other source seems to need :)

Now its not just because the cartridge is balanced. The reason the balanced line system came into being was to eliminate or reduce artifact from the interconnect cable (it was the phone company that benefited from this initially, but the recording industry saw the same advantage and switched over right away).

Now you would think that getting rid of the sound of the cable would be a thing that any audiophile would want!

In practice, it does work out that the cable ceases to be a variable in the sound of the LP playback when you run the cartridge in the balanced domain, as long as the cable is built properly. If it is, ground will be on pin 1 of the XLR and will not have to be hooked up separately.

If the phono section is also balanced and differential, you have a further advantage of lower distortion and lower noise. This is because distortion is not compounded at each stage throughout the preamp. In addition, a differential gain state in theory has 6 db less noise that the equivalent single-ended gain stage. This means that you may not need as much gain with a differential phono section. Less gain stages means it might be that much more transparent.

People ask often why we don't have separate outboard phono sections. The reason is connectivity to the line section. If you really want transparency (and its analog- who doesn't??) then you don't want the connectivity of connectors and interconnect cables getting in the way (as well as the variable of what sort of load the phono section is being asked to drive). As long as your power supplies are up to it, you have a better chance of getting it sound right if the phono section is built-in to the preamp.

So we rely on our line stage to drive the interconnect and it can easily drive over 100 feet, even though its an all-tube preamp. That way you can put the turntable and preamp where you want it (and hide the cables), instead of being stuck between the loudspeakers (which is not usually the best place, and often does not fare well with the WAF).

I'm partial to balanced phono stages, using one myself. Lots of benefits as Atmashphere has pointed out.

As to the OP's original question, I would point out that the Ayre has both balanced inputs and outputs, the Parasound only balanced outputs.

The big benefits of balanced in a phono stage are IMO realized at the input, not the output. If you're really interested in balanced, seek out a phono stage that is fully balanced at the input as well as the output. That would be worthwhile IMO.