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Balanced or Unbalanced?

Hi-end should be about as few compromises as one's budget will allow.

It's a shame (or a conspiracy) that hi-end mags do not educate us on the basics, such as unbalanced circuit designs vs differentially balanced designs and XLR connectors/connections vs XLR connectors/connections and their relative impact on music playback. Why do I mention "conspiracy"? Magazines seem reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them- the majority of manufacturers are still in the dark ages selling unbalanced gear. Why? It seems you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Hi-end roots are based in unbalanced designs. When the few differentially balanced designs (XLR) first appeared on the market, they were too expensive for most of us. Today, several manufacturers offer XLR designs that are competitively priced with unbalanced designs.

Think about it, sharing the L/R signal on circuit boards and through parts cannot be a good thing. Adding insult to injury is the RCA connector. A system is only as good as it's weakest link and this is the RCA connection. In response, several manufacturers have improved the RCA connector, but to what ultimate result? You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

Reviewers (and I blame this on editors) typically allow balanced components to be reviewed within the confines of an unbalanced system. See The Absolute Sound August issue review of the Raysonic 168. Consequently, we are not informed on the components' ultimate sonic value.

If you are on a quest for best sound, begin to replace your RCA based components with differentially balanced. Most will accommodate RCAs or just buy RCA/XLR adapters until you fully transition.
tweak1
dob
577 posts
 
Thank you Athmashere!
Rafael
samhar
1,048 posts
 
My CDP, pre -amp and amp are all bal units, I recently switched from all S/E to all bal in the same cable. The improvement was impressive, more than I expected it would be. Inserting bal from CDP to PRE first the sound expanded, became airier, the sound stage increased and the sound seemed "less dense" more alive cleaner and clearer!! I used a SLM to keep the volume at 74 db with S/E and bal. When the second bal cable was inserted from pre-amp to amp there was a substantial increase in bass. I was told each unit sounded better using bal I/C but the amount of change was a surprise!! It was as if the S/E had been choking the system down!!
shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
7,477 posts
 
I was told each unit sounded better using bal I/C but the amount of change was a surprise!! It was as if the S/E had been choking the system down!!

Such a huge performance improvement is unusual - perhaps you had a problem with noise from a ground loop with RCA. Did you carefully check signal levels - sometimes a higher signal or higher volume is normally immediately perceived as a sound improvement (particularly bass is what blossoms at higher volumes due to the way our hearing works...)

Certainly I highly recommend XLR as it means less hassle/problems - better sound more reliably and almost always a lower noise floor - however I would not claim XLR sounds dramatically better than a good working RCA connection - it should sound the same if gear is working properly and no noise/ground loop issues.
samhar
1,048 posts
 
Hi Shadorne I don't know enough to disagree with you I only know what I heard, also there was an experienced audiophile with me at the time and he was more than a little surprised at the changes in fact he was bummed he had to run S/E from his Ref 3 to his VS-110 after hearing the improvement in my system. The biggest change was from the CD3 MKll to Calypso. I just bought the CDP from Audphile1 he strongly advised using bal I/C saying the unit sounded better bal. I was told the same thing about the Calypso by an audiophile whose experience I respect. Is it possible these two units that are bal designs and individually improve with the use of bal I/C improve even more together? I kept the sound level at 74 db with S/E Sky and Bal Sky so we were very surprised how much better the bal sounded we both looked at each other in disbelief asking are you hearing what I'm hearing!! I'll A-B tomorrow to recheck, I don't have time today as we're off to the USC-OSU game soon!!! Fight On!!!!!

musicnoise
377 posts
 
The principle advantage to using balanced vs unbalanced topology is that unwanted interference is presented common mode and subtacted out. So, if you have noticable interference, the balanced approach should show significant improvement over the unbalanced . If you do not have any such problems then you should not see a difference. I personally use a balanced approach because it is available in my gear and ideally a better setup. However, I have also tried the unbalanced connections. I heard no difference whatsoever. Of course I don't have noise problems. If its available in your gear - I would use it. If it isn't and you have no problems with noise, I would not change anything. A lot of options are out there for a wide variety of problems that can be encountered in audio equipment. However, I have never seen a point in preemptively addressing problems that do not exist. Sometimes upgrading is nonsensical. A friend recently asked my opinion on going to an amp that was "quad balanced" over another amp because of a lower spec'd snr. The snr of his current amp is spec'd at 112 db and he was looking at going to an amp that spec'd at 124 db (there were other advantages to going to the second amp). And he was happy with his current amp. My suggestion was that the only difference would be on paper. Both specs are so good that it just would do nothing but confer bragging rights. Same thing here - if you don't have noise problems, I see no reason to change what you have.
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