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‘Unbalanced is Best'? a comparison of balanced and unbalanced

Not really. Just three.
1. I started a poll on power cords last week which seems to go for ever. I can't stop that.
2. I started this thread this morning as I just read the article in HiFi critic, as I genuinely thought it was interesting, and through some people's replies (once the cable slurs were out of the way) I have learnt a lot about what balanced and unbalanced means. I feel genuinely enlightened.
3. And on the basis of the recent power cable threads, over lunch me and my friend wrote a quick parody of a power cable thread. Perhaps wrongly we thought it worth sharing. I guess that could be considered trolling. If so then it can be taken down. It made me smile doing it though. Sorry if you thought it poor. I admit it is written from the pov of someone who is engaged with Power Cables, so definitely biased!

PS. I asked Tony to take down the third thread as no one got the humour. Lesson learnt - don't try and be amusing, it isn't funny.
 
You'll not be surprised to hear that I believe the exact opposite!

Marketing bullshit has been responsible for forming the vast majority of the "beliefs" of many audiophiles and the most of it is total bollocks! It has become so ingrained and "accepted wisdom" in many cases that even scientific proof that they've "been had" only strengthens their "faith"... ANYTHING rather than them having to admit that the £1K thingummyjig they were conned into buying and have poured much purple prose of praise onto on various forums, not only doesn't work but can easily be shown as having had zero possibility of ever working when exposed to a little scientific analysis.

People may not want protecting from foo... but with things like this out there http://www.lotushifi.co.uk/introducing-entreq-grounding/ they certainly need protecting from it....
They of course have a right to decide what to spend their own money on, but if even slightly interested in the above product they can't be said to have the intelligence to!
As P T Barnum famously (didn't) say "there's one born every minute"
Those grounding boxes....are unbelievable! Enjoyed the amazement.
 
Thanks. I thought that was what it was about too. I think I will not share experiences in future on here. Is there a forum where you can, or is it always like this on all hifi forums?

I`ve said it before, if you don`t want an argument why start a cable thread?
 
I've said it before this is not a cable thread. It is a discussion on balanced v unbalanced. No cables.

Looks like a cable thread to me, same ignoring the well known technical aspects, same reliance on a lot of anecdote and same descent into rudeness and deliberate misunderstanding of posts.
 
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Would that be the Wam?

I was never there but I have heard many tales of it.

I did notice a big difference on here when there was some kind of putsch over there and a lot of banned or barred or disaffected ex-Wams washed up here.
Not the Wam. I just got banned there instead. Twice! When it was still the WIgWam, not this newfangled Wam thingy.
If you want details, ask Mr. Cat. :D
 
I've lately come to conclusion that one's gramophone apparatus is best enjoyed in the privacy of one's own home or, at the very most, in the company of a few well chosen and trusted friends, and that the experience is not to be shared with rude and vulgar strangers on public fora such as to become the subject of gross and unpleasant ridicule.
 
If I hade to come down on one side of the argument or the other I would say that on the whole I am unbalanced.

Or have I got the wrong end of the thread?

:confused:
 
I don’t see what the fuss is about. Using your own equipment try both and go with what sounds best to you. FWIW I found that xlr sounds best from cdp to Energiser for Stax headphones and rca sounds better between my pre and power amp.
 
I was recently advised that unbalanced connection was better in a home environment than balanced. The reason being the signal has to be converted to balanced and then converted back to unbalanced meaning there's more fiddling with it. Also, it was pointed out that most amps aren't really balanced, they just have a cheap circuit to split the signal so it will work on an XLR balanced cable.

Having said that, I can understand studio's going balanced as a necessary evil to combat potential interference from all the electronics and longer runs that the signal has to be protected against.
 
It's not a complex argument, you could attempt to comprehend and rebut. But I guess not.


It's not dismissal.

The Ayon that the HFC writer used contains an inherently balanced DAC. They then choose to use a pair of dual triodes to perform balanced I/V conversion, balanced to single ended conversion and output drivers for both balanced and single ended. Which cannot be done properly with the devices they chose. Poorly implemented by definition. A balanced output from this CDP would pass through less electronics than the unbalanced, if implemented without compromise.


Don't know anything about Vitus, other than a CDP they make uses an AD1955 DAC, which has a balanced current output. So again, more electronics to make a single ended output without losing DAC performance. Poorly implemented is demonstrable for the Ayon, so QED. I'd be surprised if the D-Sonic didn't require more electronics to implement its single ended input, but it's an obscure setup. So 'duckworp' (the sound of his hifi?) prefers the sound of more electronic stages and Pearl Acoustics chooses inherently compromised equipment.


You didn't bother to read either the thread title or the HFC article referenced?


I don't think you read the thread with due attention.

And perhaps not even the last phrase of the OP...
 
This statement is meaningless in this context. Of course people can do what they want with their money but their 'intelligence' when applied to their spending surely comes from a decent inquiry into and knowledge of the subject.
They would educate themselves from ( amongst other things ) reading forums this this one. So a debate occurs between the 'for' and 'against'



... and both sides do express their opinions ... you just don't seem to like the opinions from those you don't agree with or who don't agree with you.



...and you know this how?... asked them all have you?

You are maintaining that foo does exist and people don't want to be cautioned against it? Really?

You should read my post as an answer to Misterdog's "So you are neither providing statistical or scientific 'evidence' or even any reasoning".
 
I don’t see what the fuss is about. Using your own equipment try both and go with what sounds best to you. FWIW I found that xlr sounds best from cdp to Energiser for Stax headphones and rca sounds better between my pre and power amp.

I'm a bit perplexed myself...
 
Though in the OP the word interconnect is used 7 times and the word cable twice.
Well, it's kind of tricky to try the two types without any cables. And he uses the words balanced or unbalanced thirteen times! Which trumps your nine.
Be sensible, and assume like me, that he doesn't have the precise terminology on the tip of his tongue, and stop looking for pointless arguments.
 
So if this not a cable/interconnect thread it must be regarding this then.

http://www.hairballaudio.com/blog/resources/diy-resources/balanced-and-differential

It's not an argument I would recognise as relevant... By balanced I always mean differential and would never consider it meaning anything else in the context of signal transmission.
In actual circuit topologies there are all sorts of ways of looking at things and with some room for contention!

An op amp has a differential input and can provide pretty amazing CMRR but most have an unbalanced output and deal with the signal in an unbalanced form after the input long tailed pair (LTP)....
Or do we mean a circuit in which + & - inputs are amplified by two identical amplification circuits from input to output with the output of course also balanced but the only CMRR as such being provided by the matching of the two amplification chains? Where then should the cancellation of common mode signals happen? At the speaker as in your set up?


A bridged amp is of course both balanced and differential at the output but may well have an unbalanced input... this may be converted to balanced by a handful of op amps or the amp could have intrinsically inverting and non inverting power amps for each channel (yes two power amps per channel. Normal for bridged). Done well this can completely remove speaker return currents from the main ground, with obvious advantages... at the expense of using twice as many parts....

It's an interesting subject with many pitfalls for the unwary and gotchas... I have some examples of my own work where in trying to use a particular topology for a certain reason, but keeping it truly intrinsically balanced, I've designed almost to the "you've wallpapered over the door" stage and it's gotten maybe 10 times as complicated as envisaged in order to design around certain gotchas that would never have occurred if it was unbalanced!!
Do we want end to end balanced? From say MC cart to speaker where it finally joins the two anti phase signals? Consider the relative proportions of the differential and common mode signals for a moment... and what would happen if the common mode signal clipped... especially asymmetrically... nasty!!

This is why I said in an earlier post that the best balanced topologies usually have a certain elegance to them;)

And all the above is just scratching the surface of the subject, so dear reader, you may imagine my thoughts at "so what's all this phono V XLR plugs. Which ones best":D
 


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