-
WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
cable length influence for balanced signals
- Thread starter blanc
- Start date
charleski
Major Contributor
No.
One of the major points of balanced connections is that they reject noise and can be used for long cable runs.
Speedskater
Major Contributor
No, in pro audio on location live sound or recording, 100 meter (300 foot) balanced interconnects are often used.
* * * * * * * * *
In fact the main virtue of XLR balanced interconnects over RCA unbalanced interconnects, is in long runs.
Not much difference in 3 meter (10 foot) and under interconnects.
* * * * * * * * *
In fact the main virtue of XLR balanced interconnects over RCA unbalanced interconnects, is in long runs.
Not much difference in 3 meter (10 foot) and under interconnects.
It is very hard to say, since price is not always reflective of performance. So you can have a 50E cable performing better than a 500E one, depends on the cable, and partly the impedance of your headphones and/or the output impedance of your amp. But, If you think an expensive cable is going to transform your headphones, then I am sorry, it won't. Save your money for better headphones or amp. As long as your cable is not faulty, that is all you need.
Tin foil? wouldn't do anything, unless your amp has issues with RF picked up by the cable, highly unlikely.
Although generally true, but for a headphone cable, the noise issue is irrelevant.
Those are for input cables, not output cables. You are replying to a headphone cable thread.
Irrelevant.
There is a certain minimum price for making a 'balanced' cable from a materials and labour standpoint. But spending more money will not get you any amount of better sound quality. You might want better connectors (Neutrik for example) for reliability, or a nicer sleeve or even braid to make the cable look and/or feel nicer. But where having a 'balanced' connector like XLR can give you more power and therefore potentially higher sound quality, nothing (reasonable) will affect sound quality.
I had a custom cable made by Hart Audio and I'm happy with it. It was truly custom so a little more expensive, but they are reasonably priced for normal cables.
charleski
Major Contributor
Yeah, there's absolutely no point in using a 'balanced' (actually differential) cable for your headphones these days. Differential cables allow the amp to generate more power by using twice the amplifiers in opposite polarity, but it's now easy to find a single-ended amp that can produce all the power you'd ever need. There can be some benefit in using a balanced connection between your DAC and headphone amp if you suffer from a ground loop or the two are separated far from each other, but other than eliminating ground loops the benefit is pretty marginal.
In almost all cases the only reason to use a balanced headphone cable is to show others that you spent a lot of money on your system ...
In almost all cases the only reason to use a balanced headphone cable is to show others that you spent a lot of money on your system ...
In a portable amp, running on batteries , peak voltage available is limited.
So by using balanced, you get to use the same battery twice !
I.e. quadruple the power out.
2 Times the
Last edited:
4 times the power (2 times voltage swing).
2 times the noise voltage.
2 times output impedance.
Even harmonic distortions cancelling out.
Odd harmonic distortions doubling up.
Yes right.
No. that's the beauty of it.
To incoherent noise sources of the same strength add to
I said noise VOLTAGE!Yes right.
No. that's the beauty of it.
To incoherent noise sources of the same strength add toso approximately 1.4
i know but its not 2 times the voltage.
its ~1.4 times.
√ (1² + 1²) = 1,414...
Noise is per definition random.
if you add tow random numbers/voltages between -1 and 1 you don't get 2 you get approximately 1.4
Last edited:
Please explain that, why is it root of this and that.
In balanced mode, we have two amplifiers, with two noise floors adding to each other.
In voltage, the noises just add up. so if one amp has a noise floor of 0.1mV (peak to peak), then two amps will have noise floor of 0.2mV.
You don't agree?
No, he' is correct. Uncorrelated noise (or any uncorrelated signals) add by 3dB, as he indicates. If they are correlated they add by 6dB.
No this is not how it works.
You can absolutely not just add this like some DC battery's in series
The Noise has polarity (or "phases")
So some of the noise is maybe adding but but everything out of polarity is subtracting ("canceling out")
"peak to peak" especially without bandwidth is btw. invalid if you talk about noise.
(page5-8)
Thank you, you are correct.
This is, by the way, why SNR increases when you sum 2 channels with the same signal (like in high performance DACs, as an example), or when you double the tape width (for a good old tape recorder), or, in photo, when you increase the size of your camera's sensor.
Similar threads
