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RE: Questions about balanced and unbalanced interconnects

Posted by John Elison (A) on January 18, 2015 at 18:49:26

In Reply to: Questions about balanced and unbalanced interconnects posted by George S. Roland on January 18, 2015 at 16:23:17:

> 1.) Do balanced connectors always sound better than unbalanced ones?

No! Balanced components reject noise picked up by the interconnect but don't necessarily sound any better than unbalanced components. Very long connections tend to act like antennas and pick up noise. A differential balanced input sees only the audio signal and rejects any noise picked up on the interconnect. Usually, balanced interconnects provide no advantage in home stereos where the length of interconnects tend to be relatively short.

> 2.) Why is that the case?

I think some people want to believe that balanced components are better because professional components have balanced inputs and outputs. The reason, as stated above, is so that long cable runs can be used without collecting noise.

> 3.) For those in my situation, would I achieve better performance by using XLR-RCAs at one end and XLRs at the other or would this not yield any improvement?

No! If you require an XLR adapter on one end, it will make no difference in performance onto which end you install the adapter. You will save money by installing the adapter on the amplifier while using an ordinary RCA cable from preamp to amplifier. If you install the adapter on the preamp, you will then have to buy a balanced cable to go to the amplifier.

My advice would be to buy an amplifier with RCA inputs. Usually, amplifiers designed for home audio have RCA inputs even if they also have balanced inputs. It is possible that some amplifiers with balanced inputs only might be fully balanced internally and therefore suffer significantly when used with an RCA-to-XLR adapter. An amplifier of this kind would have a balanced signal at its speaker outputs and would provide only one-fourth its rated power when used with an RCA-to-XLR adapter.

Good luck,
John Elison

Edits: 01/18/15

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