balanced or unbalanced wiring?

[Tone Deft]

a poll to see what people are using in their studios. I don't read here that people use balanced cables, I'm curious what the reality is.

balanced has its place but I don't think it's always necessary.

poll answers might not fit all the situations.

[Johnisfaster]

The fact of the matter is a pro studio is gonna have quite a bit of balanced cables being run all over the place. If you understand how a balanced cable phase cancels noise there would be no way you could argue that it's a bad idea.

[Tone Deft]

The fact of the matter is a pro studio is gonna have quite a bit of balanced cables being run all over the place. If you understand how a balanced cable phase cancels noise there would be no way you could argue that it's a bad idea.

do you think I don't know how it works? c'mon man, I've explained it to literally dozens of people.

dude, I'm not talking about a Pro Studio, fuck those guys, they have the money and NEED to deliver the best possible setup, of course they'll use balanced.



look, there's knowing the details of the good and bad of audio. to me the real beauty is to know where to draw the line a LOT of it is BULLSHIT. what's an acceptable bit depth or sample rate or noise floor, there are limits to all that. the retarded answer is to say that the max bit depth is the best, the highest sample rate is the best etc. the wise answer is to know how to define the limits of what matters, I find that beautiful.


I'm curious what the real world answer is. I wonder if there are people that went balanced and it saved their asses or if most people just use unbalanced. from reading here I rarely if ever read of people using balanced in their home studio.


JIF - I totally absolutely do not mean to contradict or argue with you. just talking shop.

[Sphinx]

I think I'm about 95% balanced - I've got all my "analog" stuff wired into a 32-channel Mackie board, facilitated by two Samson patch bays. I got so tired of jumping behind (and potentially disturbing) my 2 4' racks that I SWORE that once I bought a home, I was going to patch bay the bitch (with all balanced cabling) - so that I could easily run "anything into anything" without having to do the "let me jump behind the rack" dance! Now if I could get my cats to stay out from behind there as well, I'd be a happy camper!

[Johnisfaster]

The fact of the matter is a pro studio is gonna have quite a bit of balanced cables being run all over the place. If you understand how a balanced cable phase cancels noise there would be no way you could argue that it's a bad idea.

do you think I don't know how it works? c'mon man, I've explained it to literally dozens of people.

dude, I'm not talking about a Pro Studio, fuck those guys, they have the money and NEED to deliver the best possible setup, of course they'll use balanced.



look, there's knowing the details of the good and bad of audio. to me the real beauty is to know where to draw the line a LOT of it is BULLSHIT. what's an acceptable bit depth or sample rate or noise floor, there are limits to all that. the retarded answer is to say that the max bit depth is the best, the highest sample rate is the best etc. the wise answer is to know how to define the limits of what matters, I find that beautiful.


I'm curious what the real world answer is. I wonder if there are people that went balanced and it saved their asses or if most people just use unbalanced. from reading here I rarely if ever read of people using balanced in their home studio.


JIF - I totally absolutely do not mean to contradict or argue with you. just talking shop.

I didn't mean to imply you didn't understand how they worked, just saying that anyone who understands how they work really wouldn't have much to argue against them other than expense.

theres a lot about my studio that is really unprofessional, I'm all down with that. My noisefloor is probably a lot more than a pro studio would accept but I'm down with that too. but there was a time when my external effects where introducing a ton of hiss into the system and that was taken care of by simply using balanced cables. same with my monitors, I used to get RF on those when I first got them, so I got xlr cables and presto it was gone.

but sure, do trouble shooting by all means. but if the dude didn't know that balanced cables might fix his problem then he might not know to use them when his trouble shooting led him to that scenario.

[Illum]

For me, they matter. Most home studios have a bunch of ts and rca cords all overlapping one another terminating to 1 spot. Add in all the usb, firewire, serial cables and power cords and you have shit conditions for recording and monitoring. On a lot of balanced devices, you'll get a hotter signal than if you were to use unbalanced cords.

[Johnisfaster]

I think I'm about 95% balanced - I've got all my "analog" stuff wired into a 32-channel Mackie board, facilitated by two Samson patch bays. I got so tired of jumping behind (and potentially disturbing) my 2 4' racks that I SWORE that once I bought a home, I was going to patch bay the bitch (with all balanced cabling) - so that I could easily run "anything into anything" without having to do the "let me jump behind the rack" dance! Now if I could get my cats to stay out from behind there as well, I'd be a happy camper!

dude, patchbays really are a beautiful thing aren't they? I was intimidated when I first got mine but once you spend the time to figure it all out it is such a joy to patch away freely.

[Tone Deft]

JIF - gotcha, interesting post.

Illum - also interesting. some of my lines are noisier than others, maybe it's time I tightened my game. oh the fun of changing out cables.

Sphinx - pretty. cats... you're lucky they let you live in your home.

[john doe by choice]

I get the cables that fit with my setup - if something has unbalanced outs, balanced cables aren't going to do that gear any good, but if it has balanced outs, I get balanced cables for that piece, even if I'm running those cables to unbalanced ins (which I try to avoid). I have a neutrik patchbay and a 1402VLZ that I run everything through to my ProFire 610, and the only time I get noticeable (bothersome) noise in my setup is when I plug my bitrman in. The only unbalanced gear I run is a turntable (which is grounded) and a SP303 (which I try to make sound dirty as Pigpen anyway), and both of those only have RCA outs, so no option to use balanced cables anyway.

[Johnisfaster]

I get the cables that fit with my setup - if something has unbalanced outs, balanced cables aren't going to do that gear any good

am I incorrect in thinking that balanced cables will eliminate any noise they pick up along the way via phase cancellation despite whether your outputs are balanced or not?

anyone?

[Tone Deft]

I get the cables that fit with my setup - if something has unbalanced outs, balanced cables aren't going to do that gear any good

am I incorrect in thinking that balanced cables will eliminate any noise they pick up along the way via phase cancellation despite whether your outputs are balanced or not?

anyone?

balanced cables will eliminate any noise picked up along that cable's path from balanced sending device to balanced receiving device.

FWIW...
unbalanced - the signal is the voltage from the signal level to ground.
R = S - G... received signal = signal voltage minus ground.

add noise

R = S + N - G... received signal voltage = signal voltage plus noise voltage minus ground.


for balanced signals there are two signals, +signal and -signal and one ground. +signal and -signal are opposites of each other but are identical in amplitude. IOW while one reads X volts, the other read -X volts.

R = +S - -S
IOW
R = S + S

... ground is irrelevant, or rewrite that with ground
R = (+S - G) - (-S - G)
= +S -G + S + G
= S + S

add noise to those...
R = (+S - G + N) - (-S - G + N)
the key is that N is the same for both.

= +S -G + N + S + G - N
= S + S... the noise disappears.

FWIW...

[Johnisfaster]

what the hell?

[john doe by choice]

what the hell?

Backed.

I'm not sure what Tone's post adds up to, but I have a feeling it's long for "I'll be eating my idiot words"

[Tone Deft]

Backed.

I'm not sure what Tone's post adds up to, but I have a feeling it's long for "I'll be eating my idiot words"

quoted for retarded posterity. u serious? 'eat my words?' you talk waaaay too much smack Jon Doe. I thought it was pedantic to write that out.

JIF - balanced removes noise from 'point to point.' so any noise picked up between a sending balanced device to a receiving balanced device is eliminated.

[Johnisfaster]

Backed.

I'm not sure what Tone's post adds up to, but I have a feeling it's long for "I'll be eating my idiot words"

quoted for retarded posterity. u serious? 'eat my words?' you talk waaaay too much smack Jon Doe. I thought it was pedantic to write that out.

JIF - balanced removes noise from 'point to point.' so any noise picked up between a sending balanced device to a receiving balanced device is eliminated.

so if an unbalanced device and an unbalanced device have a balanced cable between them the balanced cable does nothing? this challenges my understanding of how the cable phase cancels noise