Balanced vs. single-end RCA's - A Beginner's question

gerryn: were your rca-terminated ic's noisy or did they have apparent rf problems? if you answer "no" to both parts of this compound question, then you'll likely not experience a sonic improvement with the xlr's worth your investment. BTW, i do hope, for your sake, that my surmise is wrong. you've got a very nice system for someone who regards himself as a "beginner." -cfb

From a purely engineering standpoint, a cable run as long as you have clearly warrants balanced cables. Very long runs are one of the primary reasons that pro audio gear uses balanced interconnects.

Whether it's "worth the money" is a question only you can answer...but please post your assessment after you install them. I'd be curious to know what differences you do notice.

Cornfed: Thanks for your reply and questions. I did experience some noise that I'm still not sure are a result of the RCA cabling or a phasing problem. According to my dealer, the speakers/amps may be on a different "phase" than that of the pre-amp/CD player. He tells me that they need to be on the same phase. Do you know anything about this subject?

I must say that since the Martin Logan's need to be plugged in, I do hear a very faint, mid-range hummmmm when there's no signal going to the speakers.

thanks

As a follow-up, I have also heard that balanced cabling provides a 3 db or up to a 6 db gain, depending on who I talked to. (Maybe they will not make a big difference and I did this simply to sleep better at night. :)

Silly me, but before I wrote this question, I forgot about the search engine were I found MANY questions/answers like the one I posted.

for that long of a run i think xlrs are the way to go. hell of a beginers system. the logans would take you to live concerts with good tubes.

For a pair of 50 footers that don't require a second mortgage, I recommend making your own cables. Use Mogami Neglex cable ($1.00 - $1.50/foot) which is used almost everywhere in the recording process. Add Nuetrik AES/EBU (balanced) connectors at < $5.00 each and use 4% silver, lead free solder. I would put these cables up against anything out there. For less than $200.00 you can buy everything, including a soldering iron if you don't own one. Don

Hi, I had a pretty long run of Transparent Ultra single-ended interconnects (25 ft) between my amp (Audio Research VT100 MkIII (tubes)) and preamp (Audio Research LS-15). I switched to the same length run of Transparent Ultra balanced and heard greater volume and greater detail. Not sure whether I heard more bass. The speakers I was using are Genesis 500's, floor standers w/their own amps for bass drivers, so the amp/preamp and interconnects were only affecting the mids and highs. When I changed CD players from a Meridian 508.24 to a Marantz SA-1 SACD player, I felt the highs/mids were too harsh and not as sweet as they had been. So I went back to the single-ended run of Ultra!
I hope your dealer or seller of the balanced runs will let you try them first in your system. Sometimes the balanced cables sound better, but sometimes worse. I eventually sold all my Transparent interconnects and have changed to Ensemble's new Dynaflux, in balanced runs. The sound is wonderful, detailed, warm, no harshness, no noise. I am still using the ARC VT100 and the Genesis 500's and the Marantz SACD, but changed preamps to the BAT VK30SE.
Well, that's my experience for you, for what it's worth.