You can also have a situation where a truly balanced amplifier has poor common mode rejection, making it no better than a single ended amplifier in this regard.Īs to which works or sounds better, it’s more how these circuits are implemented by the manufacturers than the actual configuration of the gear and weather you use a single ended or XLR connection. You could have an amplifier with single ended inputs and balanced internal circuitry. Most XLR connectors offer a locking mechanism not present in RCA connectors.īalanced internal amplification circuitry has additional advantages in that certain types of distortion are cancelled out. By being balanced, interference impinging on the cable will be cancelled out by the balanced input circuitry of the receiving piece of gear. This prevents ground current induced hum between different pieces of gear. Several posts in this thread conflate balanced inputs and outputs with balanced internal amplifier circuitry.īalanced inputs and outputs, when designed properly to AES48, have advantages over single ended interconnects even if the underlying amplifier circuitry is not balanced.īalanced I/O doesn’t use the cable shield as an audio return. If the circuits aren't truly balanced, there is nothing to gain by using the XLR inputs/outputs.This is incorrect. What needs to be clear here is whether or not the OP actually has balanced gear or if he just has a pair of XLR inputs/outputs on his gear for convenience. I've done that too with excellent results. You can also simply put a line transformer at the output of an existing single-ended preamp and drive a single ended amplifier with another transformer at the other end of the balanced cable. But you could as easily use a tube to drive a single-ended output transformer- I've done that in a good deal of mic preamps we've made. The playback side was single-ended too except right at the line drive it used a 12AU7 (IIRC) in push-pull driving an output transformer. The record circuit was entirely single ended though and it worked fine. A great example of this is the old Ampex 351 record/play tape electronics. The benefit is there even if the cable is 6 inches long!įurther, it does not matter what the internal circuitry of the amp or preamp is like, it can be single-ended as long as the input and output is handled correctly. You're talking maybe hundreds, certainly not thousands to do this. We use Mogami Neglex and we also make up cables using it. I don't think I will drop a bunch of cash to find out so maybe I can find someone to loan me a pair for a test first.If all is well the cables should be cheap. Users of SUTs take note! All transformers including SUTs can be used to receive the cartridge signal in the balanced domain.I just looked up the specs of both the Rotel and my Luxman and both say Balanced XLR. But balanced lines can be executed with single-ended gear if good transformers are used. Now it is a fact that if the phono circuitry is fully differential that there is additional benefit (for example in our phono sections only two stages of gain are required to work with a LOMC cartridge run straight in- you get theoretically 6dB less noise per stage of gain). The advantage of running a cartridge balanced is of course to minimize any artifact from the cable- meaning an inexpensive cable can sound just as good as one costing 2 or 3 orders of magnitude more! Its arguable that this is the one place you really want to get it right! Similarly if an input transformer is used with a LOMC cartridge (and the transformer is properly loaded to prevent ringing) then the tonearm interconnect will have far less effect on the sound of the system.

You might say that the balanced line system itself was the exotic cable industry prior to Robert Fulton creating his first ’Fulton cable’ back in the late 1970s. This was long before an exotic cable industry existed. This allowed the tape machine to have microphones a good 150 feet from the machine with no degradation of the mic signal. The input used an input transformer as well. Its internal circuitry is entirely single-ended except for the push pull output it has driving its output transformer to drive a 600 Ohm balanced line. The Ampex 351 tube tape electronics were used to record a great deal of classical and jazz recordings done by RCA and the like. Balanced shmalanced.unless all your components are differentially balanced, you will not get the improved performance.

Ampex 351 input transformer