[GhostMM]

Hello,
I'm a newbie in diy audio, i try to build some stuff base on different kit i found in internet. My system will be an hypex ncore amp, a pcm1704 balanced dac, a bhl jfet phono preamp and a single power square wave headamp copy (by kevin gilmore). The ncore and dac are balanced, head amp and phono are single ended. I want to build a preamp to control the volume and to mix all this stuff, but as i'm very limited in electronics and in designing stuff, i'm limited to kits. Also, i have to deal with balanced and SE... so the only solution i find is to build the preamp balanced (with 2 input and 2 output, control by two elma type 04 switch). I'll have to convert the SE input of the phono preamp to balanced, and to convert the headamp output from balanced to SE.

For the preamp part i'm interested by a muses 72320 volume control with a salas DCB1 buffer.

I made some research but i have to admit i am quiet lost in the choice of what i need. It seems i have two option : an ic base converter and a transformer. I'm looking for the best quality but i want to avoid expensive stuff. In IC based stuff i have find this for SE to BAL : http://sjostromaudio.com/pages/index.php/hifi-projects/148-ubc01-audio-balanced-driver and this for BAL to SE : http://joeaudiophile.com/shop/balanced-to-single-ended-kit
But i'm very suspicious with op-amp base audio...

In transformer area their is a lot of possibility, jensen, cinemag, edcor, lundahl... but i don't know anything about transformer, what would be the best for my needs ?

Thank you