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Unbalanced vs Balanced Outputs
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| Stuart Silver |
I've been checking out a few soundcards to replace my current one and a lot of the mention having 'balanced' or 'unbalanced' outputs. Can anyone give me a simple explanation of what it means and which is better?
Thanks |
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| Swing |
Balanced cales are a way of improving signal quality over a distance in cabling. Note that you are going to get very little if any noticable improvement in using balanced cables in a home studio.
Normal cables run two wires, but are subject to EM interference.
Balanced cables run three wires. One wire is the reference (ground), the other is positive and the other negative. The theory is that any interference will affect both +/- equivalently and hence translate into less interference.
Classically balanced cables are XLR and TRS, though TRS can and often is unbalanced. TRS balanced has two plastic notches in it (three metal contacts +/grnd/-) while unbalanced have just one notch (two metal contacts).
Note that once balancing is lost anywhere within the chain the signal then becomes unbalanced. Obviously, if the signal was never balanced to begin with, then using balanced cables makes no difference either.
The application of balanced cables is for high quality audio or professional rigs, especially when the cabling is run over a very long distance and hence more subject to interference. I challenge you to be able to find any significant difference in a home setup.
What does this mean for you ?
Well, nothing really. Don't let it influence your decision too much. |
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| Stuart Silver |
| Excellent, thanks for the response- thats totally cleared it up for me. |
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