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In Reply to: RE: Questions about balanced and unbalanced interconnects posted by garf on January 19, 2015 at 03:25:45:
A fully balanced amplifier would be equivalent to a stereo amplifier that is bridged to mono. You connect a speaker to the two hot (red) output terminals so that each speaker wire contains an audio signal. An unbalanced amplifier has a signal on the hot (red) terminal only while the other is ground. Consequently, if you are providing a signal to only one speaker terminal of each channel on a fully balanced amplifier, the maximum power it can produce is only one-forth of its rated power.
If your ARC VT130SE is fully balanced, it will have an in-phase signal on the positive speaker terminal and a 180-degree out-of-phase signal on the negative speaker terminal. If it has only one audio signal on the positive speaker terminal with ground on the negative terminal, it is not what I consider to be fully balanced.
For example, I own a Parasound Halo A21 amplifier. It has both balanced and unbalanced inputs, but its speaker terminals have the audio signal on the positive (red) terminal only, so it's not what I consider to be fully balanced from input to output.
> My question is: does the CD --> pre-amp RCA-->XLR connection have any adverse effect?
That would depend on whether or not your preamp is fully balanced. A fully balanced preamp never combines the two signal legs of a balanced input. In other words, a fully balanced preamp has four discrete signal paths from input to output -- two for each audio channel. If your preamp is fully balanced and your amplifier is also fully balanced, then you will be able to extract only one-fourth of your amplifier's rated power when playing your CD player. If, on the other hand, your preamplifier combines its balanced input signals into a single path for each channel and then splits them into balanced signals again at its outputs, you are in good shape.
Best regards,
John Elison
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Follow Ups
- RE: Questions about balanced and unbalanced interconnects - John Elison 09:17:17 01/19/15 (1)
- RE: Questions about balanced and unbalanced interconnects - garf 07:57:53 01/20/15 (0)
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