Single Ended DAC vs Dual Differential XLR DAC

@verdantaudio ,

The reason the circuit is duplicated, (4 chips vs. 2 chips, etc...) is driven by the need to produce the inverse for common mode noise rejection.  That extra chip does not increase resolution, etc...

While that may be true in this device, where the noise is so high that nothing will fix it, using two DACs in a balanced configuration will often result in an improvement in THD+N/SNR as non-linearity is averaged between the two chips.

I think you need to explain more about the transformer you mention. I assume you mean an external transformer based single ended to balanced converter?

Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that balanced will sound better. It all comes down to the implementation as you have noted, and it takes more components and it is harder to do properly than a single ended connection. You are pretty much always guaranteed to get better noise/emi rejection, but I would be cautious about that blanket statement w.r.t. distortion.

You are right...being sloppy. If all you are doing to convert an SE signal to XLR is adding an "inverting amplifier" you will not get all the benefits of a device being "balanced" and depending on the quality of that section of the amp/premap/DAC, etc... you may get degradation in quality. This is where you can get the phenomenon of RCAs sounding better than XLRs in non-balanced equipment.

If the entire circuit is fully balanced, then it will be cleaner sounding but if the components that balanced signal is being sent to are not balanced then all that excellence is lost.

In practice, this shows up in DACs. Take the Rockna Wavedream SE vs. XLR. In a fully balanced system, the XLR DAC will outperform the SE. In an SE system, the XLR and SE will sound the same.

@verdantaudio ,

I think you are interchanging balanced and differential but perhaps do not mean to. "Balanced" would refer only to the connection. Differential would refer to the circuitry.

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