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Balanced v Unbalanced

Arkless Electronics said:
Eh? What's balanced audio got to do with power supplies?
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Because PSUs generate "noise/hash" call it what you will in any given system and the starquad cables lessen that noise. With a phono circuit where, the signal level you're amplifying is relatively tiny in the first place, anything which cuts down on the background hash tends to yield some improvements. The only person I've ever met in the pro field who does not think balanced circuits are inherently "quieter" no matter the length of a cable, is Malcolm Hill.
 
It is slightly odd to say balanced circuits are 'inherently' "quieter" as the actual behaviour will depend on the details of the case/situation and what is meant by 'balanced'.
 
FireMoon said:
Because PSUs generate "noise/hash" call it what you will in any given system and the starquad cables lessen that noise. With a phono circuit where, the signal level you're amplifying is relatively tiny in the first place, anything which cuts down on the background hash tends to yield some improvements. The only person I've ever met in the pro field who does not think balanced circuits are inherently "quieter" no matter the length of a cable, is Malcolm Hill.
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Ah I had a feeling I would get a silly answer.... No starquad won't make any difference to the noise and no balanced is not inherently quieter and can in fact be noisier.
 
There is no need for balanced in domestic audio and in many cases unbalanced will be best as there is often less in the signal path.

It's a big subject when all aspects are looked at and goes way beyond the interconnection of equipment and into much more important areas such as ground return currents in a true balanced power amp (bridged) where some improvements can be expected in certain areas but offset by others such as greater complication.

Way to technical for the scope of this and irrelevant to the "I've got pixies at the bottom of my garden who make me magic mains fuses" crowd anyway...
 
Emotiva equipment I use is fully balanced inside and out. It sounds good in my system, but I did not really critically compare the balanced/unbalanced options.
 
Arkless Electronics said:
As with every post you make, you haven't even the faintest idea what you are talking about. When you've designed balanced and unbalanced amplifiers come back and chat to me...
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Lol, angry Jezman. Funny.

Unfortunately, being a musician of many many years, many albums contributions, many instruments, what sounds different is my forte. Highly trained and experienced at 'sound', 'Music' and how it is created. So when something sounds different, it does.

I have no interest in 'designing' amplifiers, I leave those things to people like Colin Wonfor, the real designers who take their designs to full retail manufacturing at a highly acclaimed level. Not the ones who have evident hearing issues and stuff a few bits of soldered hopes and dreams into someone else's casing and sell them out the back of a terrace house t'up North while spending their time ranting on forums about how the world is so wrong and they are so right.

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The Chronicals said:
Lol, angry Jezman. Funny.

Unfortunately, being a musician of many many years, many albums contributions, many instruments, what sounds different is my fortae. Highly trained and experienced at 'sound', 'Music' and how it is created. So when something sounds different, it does.

I have no interest in 'designing' amplifiers, I leave those things to people like Colin Wonfor, the real designers who take their designs to full retail manufacturing at a highly acclaimed level. Not the ones who have evident hearing issues and stuff a few bits of soldered hopes and dreams into someone else's casing and sell them out the back of a terrace house t'up North while spending their time ranting on forums about how the world is so wrong and they are so right.
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You can be as insulting as you like. You still haven't even the slightest idea what you are talking about, as evidenced by each posting you make usually succeeding only in being even more spectacularly wrong than the last one!
 
The facts are, a badly designed anything will be noisier than its counterpart that is designed properly. This is not some cable foo discussion rather a simple matter of construction. Pay a few more quid, not anything remotely like silly money and cables tend to make less noise than their budget counterparts. At full gain the new cables are measurably, cos I did it, quieter than the old bog standard 5 quid ones. Furthermore, the noise floor is lowered in terms of when any extraneous noise appears whilst turning the attenuator. That's classic repeatable science, not opinion.

Balanced operation is not some "trend", it's merely the domestic market finally catching up with the pro market. Given the shrinking hi end market in today's world there is no real reason not use balanced other than, it will put out of business a shed load of people selling expensive rca connectors and leads. A badly designed and made piece of kit will still be a badly designed and made piece of kit no matter what you hook it up with.
 
I've enjoyed balanced operation in my set ups for the past 15 years. They have all been pro/semi pro active gear with DSP/LMS crossovers. The beauty is in the fact once you get decent sets of XLR star quad leads there's no more arsing around with swapping interconnects and wasting your life...
 
Jim Audiomisc said:
If the units have balanced input/output then yes, might as well use them. However it shouldn't make much (i.e. noticable) difference over short connections in a home system.
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Arkless Electronics said:
It is more often than not a backward step with much equipment as they are often not natively balanced and use extra circuitry to convert an unbalanced signal to balanced and then the same again in reverse at the other end, thereby adding between 3 and 6 op amps to the signal path depending on the topology used.
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Jim/Jez - always value and seek out your science based and down to earth replies on threads like this one.

Could I ask, what the implications would be in connecting a domestic pre-amp, with unbalanced RCA outputs only, to a pro-audio power amp with balanced XLR inputs only, using standard interconnect cable (RCA to XLR obviously, and correctly wired)?

Thanks.
 
Potentially nothing. The negative part of the signal is referenced to ground, there's no common mode rejection as there would be with a balanced (differential) cabling. Potentially it could be noisier, but that depends on the rca cable picking up noise. A well shielded rca cable still may pick up no noise.

It could be noisier though.
 
nicetone said:
Jim/Jez - always value and seek out your science based and down to earth replies on threads like this one.

Could I ask, what the implications would be in connecting a domestic pre-amp, with unbalanced RCA outputs only, to a pro-audio power amp with balanced XLR inputs only, using standard interconnect cable (RCA to XLR obviously, and correctly wired)?

Thanks.
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If the amp uses a differential toplogy and you supply only the positive leg of the signal, you will only operate one half of the amp and get one quarter of the power.

That would not usually be smart.
 
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