Balanced vs Single Ended (SE) sound

[anthonyTD]

I fail to see how the first



Requires or implies the second



A fully balanced design is differential yes, but it says nothing about channels or power supplies. You could have a mono balanced design, you could have a 48 channel balanced design with shared power supplies or not.

There are a couple of obvious places where balanced can be useful. Phono cartridges are in effect balanced, and are only imbalanced by connecting on pin to ground, if rewired to be floating and going into a proper balanced input phono stage the noise cancelling aspect can be of real use. Also, a balanced input to a push pull amp makes a lot of sense (especially valve) where the phase splitter is often the major sonic problem, balanced input removes the need of a phase splitter, or at least places it elsewhere.

[Bluedroog]

I have a couple of questions for those with some technical knowledge in this area as I have to say mine is virtually none. XLR cables usually are balanced but not necessarily, is that correct? The reason I ask is because I quite fancy trying My Croft 25 in to a pair of actives which often seem to have XLR in only. My assumption on the XLR usually but not necessarily being balanced is the fact you can get RCA to XLR cables. So that would be one option, no problems I should be aware of? Second would it be plausible and cost effective to mod a pre to accommodated XLR out, or is that ridiculous? Thanks.

[Barry]

If your preamp is fitted with RCA outputs, then they are unbalanced and replacing them with XLR connectors won't make them balanced. If you want the output to be balanced then you will have to fit appropriate transformers, or replace your current preamp with one that has a balanced output.

However, I would check out the specification of your active speakers - although they may be fitted with XLR connectors, the input configuration may be unbalanced; in which case you can use a (long ?) pair of RCA to XLR cables.

[anthonyTD]

Hi, All,
you can use a single ended output with some pieces of equipment that normally require a balanced input, however, for the balanced line equipment to work, it would have to have one of its normally floating signal wires reffrenced to signal earth, this would then configure the piece of equipment that was originally balanced line' into a single ended mode, as far as the front end signal circuitry is concerned.
However' as others have said, some equipment is fully differential, all the way through.
If you prefer XLR plugs over RCA/Phono plugs and sockets then you can use XLR plugs and sockets with single ended signal, you just don't use all three pins...
Hope this helps.
A...

[Rothchild]

Some useful pointers on connecting balanced and unbalanced gear, as well as how to make a 'pseudo balanced' cable:

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may1...nda-0513-3.htm