The True Balanced Story
Our new True Balanced Connection redefines accessibility to balanced phono technology!
Present day problems
Nowadays, many electromagnetic fields interfere with turntables. The causes are wireless networks and numerous electronic devices in the modern home. The RCA cable between your turntable and your amplifier is prone to picking up noise on the way. This so-called “electrosmog“ can interfere with the tiny phono signal and add noise to your music.
The Solution
Balanced audio connections are standard among professional musicians, recording studios, and for live concerts. It is essential to have a stable & interference-free connection as these signals, especially microphone signals, will be highly amplified.
The same applies to the connection from your turntable to the phono preamplifier. The significant advantage of a balanced connection is its ability to suppress picked up noise and interferences.
Balanced Connections for Your Turntable at Home
Phono signals are 1000 times smaller in voltage than regular CD, streaming or line level signals. This is why, as you know, you need a phono preamplifier for your turntable, to amplify the signal and make it usable by your "normal" amplifier. Your cartridge is an electro-mechanical transducer just like a microphone. And just like your cartridge, every microphone requires a preamplifier too! And the most important similarity: just like a microphone, your phono cartridge is a balanced signal transducer! But, regular single-ended phono preamps only process half of the available signal coming from the cartridge! They are not making use of the balanced nature.
Balanced By Nature
Cartridges are balanced signal transducers by nature! You can easily see this, by the 4 small wires on the back of your cartridge. Why are there 4, it should be only 2 because there is just one left and one right channel? There are four, to simplify it, because each channel exists twice! Your cartridge is able to generate voltage by moving a magnet within a magnetic field generated by coils around it. Hence, the name moving magnet (note: MC cartridges do it the other way round, they move the coils around a magnet, hence moving coil). And for each movement a positive and negative voltage will be generated. Again, this is exactly the same as if a microphone diaphragm moves when you speak or sing at it. The result is a positive and negative voltage! It should be easy to argue then that both of those signals, equally carrying all the important musical information waiting for amplification, should be transported to the phono preamplifier. But here is the catch: your regular single-ended RCA cable is simply not designed to do that. Hence, the name "single-ended". Regular coaxial RCA cables can only carry one end to your preamplifier!
What do I need?
1. Your turntable needs to be equipped with a Moving Coil (MC) or Pick it PRO Balanced MM cartridge.
2. The connection between turntable and phono preamplifier needs to be done with one of our True Balanced phono cables. The outputs of your turntable can be RCA, mini XLR or 5-Pin DIN.
3. A true balanced phono preamplifier like the Phono Box S3 B, Phono Box DS 3 B, Tube Box DS3 B or Phono Box RS2 is needed.
