XLR vs RCA

Hi Subaruguru, I said they were combined at the speaker. Not that they were unabalanced. The electrical signal that is applied to the speaker terminals is balanced but the motion of the speaker is not.

Each driver can only move in one direction at a time, The cone is either moving in or it is moving out but can't go both ways at once. So in that sense it's motion is single ended.

I agree that there are well designed, great sounding components in each camp. Since I am firmly in the camp that simpler is better, I'm going with single ended. I'm using a passive preamp, my power amps have 2 tubes each, and my speakers only have one driver.

I was using the balanced outputsof my Electrocompaniet EMC-1 into the balanced inputs of my integrated amp (a non-fully balanced design) and it was an improvement over the use of RCA connections. Then I switched to a different preamp (passive) without balanced connections and I think it sounds even better. It seems to depend on many things.

Impossible to generalize, but I would definitely always at least try balanced connection on any gear that is *truly balanced* interally. On gear that is not, but provides for balanced connection anyway, experiment at your option - it's really the only way to know what you'll get.

BTW Audioengr, I take it from your comment about male/female connectors and not being able to hook up things 'backwards' that you are down with the theory of wire directionality - or were you just referring to not being able to accidentally plug an input into an input or an output into an output?

Ernie, the Pass Aleph products aren't truly balanced, are they? I mean, single-ended was sort of the raison d'etre of the Aleph line, wasn't it?

I believe the Pass Aleph line used a single gain stage in a fully balanced configuration.