balanced vs. unbalanced sound quality
I didn't personally hear Prof. J make that statement. I was told by Terry at Overture what the Prof. told him. I was buying all new cabling at the time. When I asked about balanced cables is when he told me about the Prof. point of view. I have always used balanced cables till I got the Spectral system. Good listening too you. Joenies |
I'm guessing Johnson was referring to the signal path length within a balanced circuit, not within a balanced cable.Often the signal path within a balanced circuit is simpler. At least that is the case in our stuff. For example, in our preamps there are only 2 stages of gain in the phono section and only 1 in the line stage. From LOMC to the ability to drive headphones. Rather than repeat myself though, here's an article that might be helpful regarding balanced operation:http://www.atma-sphere.com/Resources/balanced.php |
My comment about Keith Johnson’s statement wasn’t intended to endorse it, but rather to clarify it (correctly, I hope). I imagine there are as many ways to build a balanced circuit as there are design engineers. EAR-Yoshino’s Tim de Paravicini chooses to provide balanced outputs via transformers, his single-ended and balanced outputs sharing the exact same circuit. While Ralph Karsten has the engineering chops to create very simple, fully-differential balanced circuits in his Atma-Sphere products, other engineers (the ones to whom Johnson may have been referring) have resorted to a doubling of path length and parts count. |
I know this is an old thread but it seems like it was made for my questions. I use a Rotel rb991 and an older pioneer elite vsx45tx as my pre on a two channel setup. When I use rca connections I get substantial hum, my avr does not have balanced outs so to get rid of all the noise from the RCA’s I purchased an rca to xlr adapters and that took care of the hum but my volume decreased by half. I do however have a stronger and tighter bass, actually the whole sound is now very uncolored, I have been told if I go to a pre that has balanced out to the amps balanced I will get some of my volume back because the adapters mute the signal in some way? Where I was listening at a pretty loud -30db is now at reference to come close to the old unbalanced connection. Im a musician and I compare the difference in sound from unbalanced to balanced like playing my guitar through a high gain amp head without any processor, it’s dry and precise, the unbalanced sounds louder but like I added some delay and reverb, a very manufactured sound. You guys seem very educated in all this and I’ve enjoyed reading what has been discussed so far,just trying to further my understanding by picking your brains. |
