Evening Mr E...Balanced or Unbalanced?

[Babur72]

Hi Andrew,

Hope you & the rest of the WHF?S&V team are fair & well.

Would you kindly give me the benefit of your expertise by explaining the relative technical merits,or de-merits,of components sporting fully-balanced circuitry,compared with those having an unbalanced design(assuming that each component represented the best of their particular type)?

And in what way would their respective circuit designs affect the sonic character?

Many thanks.

BABUR.

 

[Andrew Everard]

In very simple terms balanced design offers two main advantages - one is better control, and the other is that the design means any interference or distortion in one half of the circuit is experienced in reverse on the other half, making it self-cancelling.

This also applies to balanced connections, which have the further advantage of both positive and negative conductors being shielded. In conventional, non-balanced, cables one of the two conductors acts as the shield.

Well, I did say it was the very simple version!

 

[Gerrardasnails]

Andrew, my amplifier has a balanced connection but my current cdp does not. I have seen XLR to RCA cables, would this be of any benefit? Also, if I were to get the CA 840C which also has balanced connection, would I notice a difference do you think if I kept my Chord Anthem RCA or a similar equivalent XLR. Please no non believer cable haters answer this. I am asking the boss only.

 

[Andrew Everard]

With your current CD player, I wouldn't bother with the XLR-RCAs.

With a player having balanced outputs, you might well notice a subtle gain in resolution when switching from standard RCAs to balanced. This isn't a cable myth thing - it's to do with the better electrical connection.

Flame shields up!

 

[Thaiman]

Some equipments I had make a lot of improvment when XLR cables used with balanced sockets and some make no different at all apart from may be louder!