XLR or single ended cables and why?

Tvad, I talked to one of the cable tech.rep last week and you were right on the fact that they did not know for sure what the heck they are talking abt. As a consumer, the " I think..." does not not worth a "shot" to me. They dance around the issues as good as their sales rep.

It is a different situation if the grounds are electrically seperated. Such is the case with a true dual-mono implementations or monoblock amplifiers, if they don't share grounds with an external ground wire or through the AC ground

In the case of mono amps with single ended inputs they will share the same circuit ground, they are connected together at the single ended source, ie. pre-amp.

steve

Shadorne, Is it a big deal to have an extra increase of 6db with XLR ? That's a lot of extra juice. Running either at 4 or 8 ohm, It requires double in wattage power for each 3db increase. Isn't it ? BTW, I have my MD. pulled the wool out of my ears the other day. Thanks for the advise.

Andrewdoan,

No there is very little current and almost no power flowing through interconnects...input impedances of devices they connect to are normally pretty high.

All a high signal level means is that if there is noise being picked up or if there is noise in the preceeding circuit then the Signal to Noise might be less by about 6db or so compared to RCA (which has a lower signal level). This is in "Theory", however, in practice RCA circuits can be just as good S/N as compared to XLR balanced....I guess it depends on the individual component circuit quality as much as anything. In any case, once you get to S/N of 110+ db which is often the case in high quality gear ...it becomes academic if it is RCA or XLR as you can only hear the noise with no other sound from the speakers and the volume cranked up and your ear at 6 inches from the tweeter!!!

Of course, the above comments are for short runs and for a normal environment where you don't have a problem with EM noise pick up (lots of cables/transformers etc. all close together).

rats:[Quote]In the case of mono amps with single ended inputs they will share the same circuit ground, they are connected together at the single ended source, ie. pre-amp.[Quote]Steve, you missed the point. The right channel circuit will contain only the right channel interconnect and right channel amplifier. The current in the ground wire of the right channel interconnect will be equal in magnitude to the current in the right channel positive wire of the same interconnect, just in opposite phase. The same would be true for the left channel, so the electrical balance condition is maintained, just like in fully-balanced systems.