Unbalanced to balanced VPI junction box change?

Standards, Schmandards, ....I'm a musician not a scientist. My system is DEAD quiet, and sounds like music....that's all I care about

That's good! Here is something to consider- if you can hear the effects of cables in your system, I would guess that you installed the cables that sounded better.

Now if you have been at this a while, you probably have replaced cables before, through a similar comparison method in your system.

What I want you to consider is that if you can hear a difference between cables, that its not a matter of one is right and the other is wrong. The fact is that both of them are wrong! How do we know this? Next year, the manufacturer of your cables will offer a newer better sounding version, or there may be an offering from another manufacturer that trumps them, or maybe a more high-buck version from the same manufacturer.

So we know that while they might sound nice, better performance is available. OTOH, if the equipment involved supported the standard, then you would not hear any differences between the cheapest cable and the most expensive. I have seen this demonstrated in spades many times.

Its not about noise, its about how the cable sounds. Again, I often get pushback on this subject but I'm not making it up- your LP or CD collection is my proof. You know how quite often audio engineers will say that cables don't make a difference? In their world (pro audio) that is the case because pro audio equipment has to support the standard and balanced cables are what they use.

IOW what we are talking about is the ability to control or 'swamp' the individual characteristics such that whatever makes it sound good or bad is no longer relevant, instead the technique is going to force the cable to do its job without editorial.

A LOMC cartridge running balanced, with a low impedance load at the preamp where the preamp ignores ground and only looks at the pins of the cartridge for the signal is the ideal situation. Although LOMC cartridges don't make much voltage, they make a surprising amount of current- not many preamps could drive 100 ohms!

So this is one area where if the preamp is set up right, the cable need not be expensive yet the cartridge can still sound its best.

To get back to the original question, if the OP's existing single-ended Valhalla cable has only one conductor to carry signal plus a different kind or character of conductor to carry the ground side of an SE hook-up, then indeed he may want to change the cable for one that affords two identical conductors, one each for each phase of the balanced output of the cartridge, plus a third to ground the shield, tonearm, phono stage, etc, which connects to pin 1 of the XLR connector, in Ralph's scheme. However, spending $1000 to do this is just not necessary. Buy some very thin gauge high purity copper or silver wire (according to preference) and some braided shield, from Michael Percy audio, and learn to do a little soldering. You could easily build a very high quality IC for under $200 that way, or you could internally rewire the VPI box for much less.

Atmasphere,

"IOW what we are talking about is the ability to control or 'swamp' the individual characteristics such that whatever makes it sound good or bad is no longer relevant, instead the technique is going to force the cable to do its job without editorial."

I have a lot of hands on experience with audio but nowhere near the technical knowledge that either you or Al possess. Assuming the above statement is true, are there any tradeoff's in sound quality? When you say "swamp" or control the signal so that the cables no longer have a sound of their own, is there a penalty to be paid in another area for things to work like that? Maybe less detail or resolution, dynamic contrast, that type of thing. The way you explain it, it almost sounds like something is being forced. Please keep in mind, I'm not saying you are wrong. I just don't know. In my experience, when you make changes, there's usually some type of trade off. At that point, of course, the subjective comes into play in that you pick what you are willing to trade, and what you need to keep. I'm just trying to figure out if you loose anything by going with balanced standards.

^^ That is a good question! It has to do with how the source (phono cartridge) is driving the load, which is to say that the source impedance should be lower than the load by about 10:1.

In the case of LOMC there does not seem to be a downside. LOMCs can drive low impedances with ease.

If we are talking line level, the equipment driving the cable should be able to drive a 600 ohm load. In the old days this was done with an output transformer (in the studio).

These days to do this you need a preamp that has some guts in the line section to drive such a load. Usually this results in a lower output impedance from that line section as well. Whether all this is a down side or trade-off is hard to tell; we solved the problem by doing a direct-coupled vacuum tube output and if anything it seems to sound better for it.

I think some might argue that the signal path is more complex when going balanced- twice as many parts is the old myth there (it does not take twice as many parts). I don't think the signal path has to be more complex; in our case we only have 3 stages of gain between the LOMC input and the output of the line section- I can't speak for all preamps here, but as far as I can tell you don't loose anything with the balanced line system.

Again, the amazing number of stereo LPs from the 1950s that are still sought for their excellent sound should tell you something.