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RE: May not work..

Posted by FidPup (A) on July 5, 2007 at 07:02:32

In Reply to: May not work.. posted by mcondo on July 5, 2007 at 05:04:56:

You might want to consider this:

If you check your owner's manual, or surf the net a bit, you'll find that, for some reason Marantz wires their balanced outputs "backwards" from the usual standard.

The usual "pro" standard, at least in the US, is "pin 2 hot" and "pin 3 cold". Marantz wires the balanced outputs as:

Pin 1 ground
Pin 2 "cold" (negative or inverted polarity)
Pin 3 "hot" (positive polarity)

The unbalanced RCA jacks are connected normally, with positive/non-inverted polarity)

So... If you connect both the RCA inputs and the balanced inputs to the preamp at the same time (to a preamp that follows the usual standard), the positive (unbalanced) input might cancel out the inverted balanced input to give a net zero output.

I suspect this is why Marantz recommends not connecting both inputs at the same time.

Anyway, you might want to try your experiment again using a balanced interconnect cross-wired with pin 2 and 3 switched at one end.

Also,check that older cable that you say "worked". Check that it isn't wired incorrectly, that is with pin 2 at one end connected to pin 3 at the other. that would be really interesting, and would "prove" my theory!

Incidently, I have seen reviews of the SA-11 where the SA-11 was compared to another player using the balanced outputs, or the where the sound of using the RCA outputs was compared to the balanced outputs. Although the reviewers reported a difference in sound, none mentioned taking the inverted polarity of the SA-11's balanced outputs into consideration!!

Ken

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