XLR waste of time ?

Almarg,

Thank you for the Jensen transformer link.

Best,
Sam

Sam, you're very welcome.

And thanks very much for the link you provided to the Rane paper, in your post dated 11/24. It is indeed, as you said, very informative, and makes the point (among many other points) that a lot of balanced equipment is designed incorrectly in some of the respects we have been discussing here.

That perhaps being one of the reasons for the disagreements that tend to arise about balanced vs. unbalanced, and perhaps being an underlying reason for some cases of sensitivity to cable differences as well, as Shadorne has often pointed out.

Best regards,
-- Al

Hi, Al,

Agreed. I value your comments...Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us.

Best,
Sam

Gentlemen: There's much that I don't know about electronics, and I appreciate the information you provide.

But perhaps one benefit of my situation is that I'm able to approach the listening experience with a bit less prejudice than some of you. And IME the various preferences expressed in this forum (tubes vs solid state, analogue vs digital) are often based on the limited experience of a set of listeners, and they don't hold up in the listening room.

Nothing I've read so far persuades me that there is anything inherently superior about differential vs non-differential technologies. It still sounds like philosophy, or, in the case of atmasphere, philosophy plus a marketing plan.

It's also quite clear, in general, and despite the various prejudices, that there is no direct correlation between electronics theory and the best sound: There's still so much that has yet to be discovered about how to reproduce sound, so much that is not understood about how the technology results in the listening experience. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a fool, or trying to fool someone else.

For every one of you with an EE degree, there is someone else with an EE degree who believes something different. Fortunately, none of that matters.

What I am in search of is a way to make a useful, practical, listening comparison between the two technologies, differential and non-differential.

Yes, I understand that this is perhaps not possible on a component by component basis, but surely someone can suggest an appropriate way to listen to the best that balanced has to offer, so I can come to the only judgment that matters.

Jimjoyce25, that's really a tough call. The problem is that you have to find a preamp that is single-ended, built to a certain built quality, and then have a differential preamp that is otherwise the same topology and build quality. There are no such products out there, so winnowing out the differences purely on if it is differential or not is nearly impossible.

So your plan B is to listen to the

best that balanced has to offer

and compare it to the best the single-ended has to offer.

Here are the actual (as opposed to theoretical) benefits of differential operation:
*up to 6 db less noise per stage of gain.
*distortion cancellation with each stage of gain.
*rejection of noise common to both inverting and non-inverting inputs
*superior rejection of power supply noise

Here are the disadvantages:
*50% more parts in circuit path
*requirement of a minus power supply
*less gain than single-ended

Here are the myths:
*signal path is more complex
fact: its the same with equal number of gain stages
*you need more gain stages
fact: not if you don't make as much noise- 2 stages of gain might be 12db less noise than SE
*equalization errors are magnified
fact: anyone who says that has not tried it :)
*'phase splitter argument' the idea that the signal gets messed up due to the differential amplifier splitting the phase. This comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of how differential amplifiers work.

I know you see it as some sort of marketing plan on my part but I simply practice what I preach. BAT was an early customer of ours before going into business for themselves, we influenced ARC, Sonic Frontiers and host of others as we were the first to have a balanced high end product which was the MP-1 preamp. The fact that it is balanced has been the single **biggest** marketing problem that we have had with it! So in a nutshell balanced differential has been out anti-marketing plan :) ... anyway in recent years balanced has finally caught on so the MP-1 has become one of the top contenders in that field, due in part to our experience and also we control a patent in the area as well.