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Original Message

Balanced cables can have an advantage even if only 6" long.

Posted by Ralph on December 24, 2015 at 09:07:55:
The noisier the environment, the more important it is to go balanced. In the home the presence of a digital source might be all the justification needed.

More components, more to go wrong. Believe me a Shindo single ended pre is as good or better than any balance pre. Also the balanced stuff cost more money for no real improvement in performance

I don't believe you. Our preamps are OTL preamps, in that they don't use an output transformer to drive a balanced line (nor do they use coupling caps). With regards to the signal path, it is simpler and lower distortion/wider bandwidth at the same time. There is only one stage of gain in the line section and two in the phono section.

The coupling cap at the output of traditional preamps, such as the Shindo, is a limiting device no matter how good the capacitor (the limit is imposed by stray capacitance and the inductance of the part, not the materials from which it is made; IOW its a mathematical thing for which there is no workaround by going with better materials).

In practice, we've had plenty of Shindo customers tell us our preamps sound better; being anecdotal that should not be taken as actual proof by any means. However, the fact of the coupling cap (and the additional complexity it represents to the signal) can. The result of direct coupling the output is improved performance which is instantly audible, particularly in the bass region, but additional transparency is also heard in the mids and highs. Its been our opinion for many years that it makes a bigger difference for the preamp to be OTL-OCL than it does for the amps! If you loose information upstream it does not matter how good your amps and speakers are- you won't recover the lost resolution.

This may explain why the MP-1 is our most popular product, often outselling all of our amplifier products put together.