Beating a dead horse...
Balanced are designed for professional use. That is why they are designed with the ground making contact first- professional use sees a lot of stuff being connected/disconnected while powered up. Making the ground connection first avoids the loud annoying buzz you get with RCA. Which with home use is a non-issue, you simply power off or even just change inputs to avoid the noise. Now if you have 20 roadies running around messing with the 768 connections in your system then balanced makes a lot of sense.
Balanced is locking because pro gear tends to get moved around a lot. So get balanced if you like to throw your system in a truck and set up at friends a lot. If your system stays in the room for years at a time then XLR is a total waste of money.
True balanced utilizes two duplicate sets of circuitry, the outputs of which are then compared in order to reject noise. That's how it works. One of the bedrock fundamental truths of high end audio is simpler is better. Another is better parts cost more and the fewer the parts the more you can spend on each part. So this one is not only wasted but by unnecessary duplication its actually counter productive. Except for professional use where runs long enough to go from your pre-amp out the door around the house and back into the room to your amp are the norm. If that's your system go balanced. Totally. Otherwise, another feature wasted on home use.
What else? Oh yeah. Like the man said half the time balanced doesn't really even mean balanced. It just means you can connect your XLR here. Decoy! Fell for it! Don't be that guy.
How many even knew all the above? So on top of everything else balanced turns you into one of these gear heads talking the talk instead of walking the walk.
None of this is new. I went through figuring this all out 30 years ago, at least. Not one damn thing has changed in all that time.
Go and listen. You will see.
Balanced are designed for professional use. That is why they are designed with the ground making contact first- professional use sees a lot of stuff being connected/disconnected while powered up. Making the ground connection first avoids the loud annoying buzz you get with RCA. Which with home use is a non-issue, you simply power off or even just change inputs to avoid the noise. Now if you have 20 roadies running around messing with the 768 connections in your system then balanced makes a lot of sense.
Balanced is locking because pro gear tends to get moved around a lot. So get balanced if you like to throw your system in a truck and set up at friends a lot. If your system stays in the room for years at a time then XLR is a total waste of money.
True balanced utilizes two duplicate sets of circuitry, the outputs of which are then compared in order to reject noise. That's how it works. One of the bedrock fundamental truths of high end audio is simpler is better. Another is better parts cost more and the fewer the parts the more you can spend on each part. So this one is not only wasted but by unnecessary duplication its actually counter productive. Except for professional use where runs long enough to go from your pre-amp out the door around the house and back into the room to your amp are the norm. If that's your system go balanced. Totally. Otherwise, another feature wasted on home use.
What else? Oh yeah. Like the man said half the time balanced doesn't really even mean balanced. It just means you can connect your XLR here. Decoy! Fell for it! Don't be that guy.
How many even knew all the above? So on top of everything else balanced turns you into one of these gear heads talking the talk instead of walking the walk.
None of this is new. I went through figuring this all out 30 years ago, at least. Not one damn thing has changed in all that time.
Go and listen. You will see.