Balanced versus single ended

I recall replacing Silver Surfer XLRs with WireWorld Platinum Eclipse 8 - HUGE difference in quality. Im not inclined to A/B them at this point, though, it might eat at me. However, I used a sample Nano 45 graphene contact enhancer on the WWs, and can’t find the rest, so I assume that would skew the A/B

FWIW you can have an entirely differential balanced preamp and it may not support the balanced standard. If you hear differences like you describe above it probably doesn't.

Back in the 1950s in the Golden Age of Stereo a great number of remarkable recordings were made. They still sound great today- and the better our systems get the better these recordings sound. They have the kind of neutrality that they do largely because the balanced line system is an exotic cable technology- but instead of spending the money on the cables, the money is spent on driving them and handling them correctly so colorations are eliminated. 

Cable manufacturers hate it when I talk about this! That's because if the standard is supported in your equipment, its very difficult for them to make a sale if you listen to what your ears are telling you. 

@atmasphere

Hey ralph, I’d mention a name on the whole balanced vs single ended thing, but he did not throw his hat into the public discussion ring, so I can’t. Not like it would mean much other than making them a participant outside of their knowing or permission.

In the conversations with him, I mentioned that, in my mind, for balanced to work at it’s best, it should be designed in layout (from the active transmission end and at the active receive end) with an RF design and build mindset, where the field effects are a major consideration, down to the board mounting points and any local potential of the chassis and circuit boards in having any additional field effect interference. Just for the sake of the last little bits of attainable perfection in actual gear. Also, that these active aspects should be mirror imaged against one another and that includes a localized short run mirrored power supply for said mirrored circuit halves.

If one opens up some high end equipment and in especially pro gear, one will not see this attempted, at all. And, this, done out to about a 1mhz level of signal handing capacity in the active circuits. Only then will the active circuitry be able to handle the micro perturbations well enough to damp/control them out to being largely below the complex sensitivities of the human ear, in the best of the listeners out there. Spectral, for one, tends to do things this way. There are others. (the designer I speak of, who agreed with this assessment, is responsible for some high level studio gear as well as home audio)

Kinda like vinyl over digital debate…one is less dynamic range and softer while the other has greater dynamics and contrast.  True Balanced gear is superior objectively.  Subjectivity however is a large part of this hobby!

n the conversations with him, I mentioned that, in my mind, for balanced to work at it’s best, it should be designed in layout (from the active transmission end and at the active receive end) with an RF design and build mindset, where the field effects are a major consideration, down to the board mounting points and any local potential of the chassis and circuit boards in having any additional field effect interference. Just for the sake of the last little bits of attainable perfection in actual gear. Also, that these active aspects should be mirror imaged against one another and that includes a localized short run mirrored power supply for said mirrored circuit halves.

@teo_audio Honestly you don't have to do any of that! As a sort of proof, look at the studio gear used to make LPs and CDs- none of that involves any such practice. As you recall, we've been doing balanced line longer than anyone else in high end audio, and I've yet to see where any of what you suggest would be a thing. Look at it this way: a lot of studio gear employs transformers to execute the balanced operation and those transformers don't have nearly that kind of bandwidth nor do they need to.

Since the balanced line system is supposed to ignore ground, you really don't have an issue of 'any local potential of the chassis and circuit boards in having any additional field effect interference'. Such might become an issue if AES48 is ignored in the design.

Unfortunately this question can not be answered in absolute terms in a general manner. It is always component to component dependent. 

Example: all of my components are single ended: preamp, mono blocks & sources. My preamp is capable of driving long runs of quality se Interconnects.  25 feet from preamp out to the mono blocks with no issues. Other quality preamps may not be so endowed.  

Additionally,  many "balanced" preamps output from 6-9V to the amplifier(s). My mono blocks only require 1V to achieve full rated output. 

My se Interconnects are all the same throughout my system, are hand made by myself with great shielded cable & superb connectors. 

Essentially, one "size" doesn't work for everyone.  You must not have an inflexible mindset & experiment. 

That said, if you have equipment with XLR connectivity exclusively then you have no choice.