2. amps-preamps
  3. 128510-2280

Why Single-Ended?

I’ve long wondered why some manufacturers design their components to be SE only. I work in the industry and know that "balanced" audio lines have been the pro standard (for grounding and noise reduction reasons) and home stereo units started out as single-ended designs.

One reason components are not balanced is due to cost, and it’s good to be able to get high quality sound at an affordable price.
But, with so many balanced HiFi components available these days, why have some companies not offered a fully-balanced amp or preamp in their product line?
I’m referring to fine companies such as Conrad Johnson, Consonance, Coincident, and Bob Carver’s tube amps. CJ builds amps that sell for $20-$39K, so their design is not driven by cost.

The reason I’m asking is because in a system you might have a couple of balanced sources, balanced preamp, and then the final stage might be a tube amp or monoblocks which have SE input. How much of the total signal is lost in this type of setup? IOW, are we missing out on sonic bliss by mixing balanced and unbalanced?

lowrider57
grannyring's avatar
grannyring
6,592 posts
 
Fact XLR is not better necessarily for common or usual runs of 1/2 meter to 1.5 meter.  
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,510 posts
 
Atmosphere.....great post...thanks.  I have a fully balanced system and wondered why when evaluating cable interconnects....there was such very little difference.....speaker connections much more obvious.
georgehifi's avatar
georgehifi
10,312 posts
 
grannyring
Fact XLR is not better necessarily for common or usual runs of 1/2 meter to 1.5 meter.
+1, In fact it’s worse in many cases as I outlined before.

" Many amps, preamps, and sources have fake balanced inputs and outputs In that they just put in an extra opamp in the signal path to create a balanced input or output.
Where their single ended input/output is better, as that fake balancing opamp is then not in the signal path."

Cheers George
herman
2,277 posts
 
Thanks Almarg

if you google around you will find debate on whether a cartridge is balanced, as I see it that really doesn't matter. The important thing is how you deal with it. if you transformer couple it with a center tapped secondary then that would definitely be balanced. Of course you could take any SE source and do the same thing.

Thanks for the spell check. My point is that when the air compressions and rarefactions hit the microphone it is equivalent to a single ended source. The diaphragm vibrates back and forth. There is no equivalent diaphragm moving forth and back. Same for a speaker, the cone moves back and forth driven by a balanced or SE amp. At the end of the day does any of that matter? probably not. 

As I see it any "advantages" of balanced are outweighed in the home environment by the simplicity and linearity of an SET amplifier. At least that's what my ears tell me. 

 I will admit the only extended listing I've done to OTL amps were Atmasphere at some dealer I believe in San Jose years ago. Can't remember the name or anything else about the system except they were playing vinyl and it did sound excellent, so I get it that many would prefer it. I do remember the guy had a lot of vinyl for sale, they all smoked cigars so the place smelled foul, and the owner was an arrogant jerk, at least he was to me.


herman
2,277 posts
 
So Ralph, you have come over to the dark side with an SE preamp. There is some hope :>)




More to discover