Exactly this ^. At line level, balanced cables matter when cable lengths are 10s or 100s of metres, such as on stage or in a studio installation. At home, any sensible length is fine unbalanced using half-decent screened cable. 10m is not long.
S
I don't know if this counts as a zombie thread, but the core question is the same as the top post.
I have a Yamaha RX-A3070 with RCA pre-outs connected to Neumann KH310 speakers (L/C/R) with 13m XLR cables on 1m RCA->XLR patch leads. Clearly this is an unbalanced system.
The XLR cables I
ordered were: 13m Van Damme Mini Quad with 1m Van Damme unbalanced patch.
The XLR cables I
got were 13m Van Damme Mini Quad x1 (Center) and what I suspect was 2x 13m Van Damme Classic StarQuad (L/R) because these two are thicker, probably 6mm diameter. In any case the 3 cables did go through my ducting (no space left for anything else up front which pleased the Mrs) and I didn't realise.
These cables were made up for me by a cable shop in London....
The Neuman KH 310 manual suggests not to use an RCA cable of more than 10m.
What is bothering me no end is that am I likely losing anything by having 14m connections on unbalanced rather than balanced?
The only person I know who I get objective advice from is my Uncle who is a electronics/hifi nut and his initial opinion was "it's probably fine" which has changed to "it's fine" once I reported I heard no distortion in music/films. Originally he recommended I buy a Funk Sam-1B (pro grade unbalanced->balanced convertor).
The only thing which strikes me as off is that when I turn the speakers on (and if they have their XLR cable plugged in) and the receiver is off then there is a lot of noise from the speakers, it's loud and uncomfortable. That vanishes when I turn on the receiver even if there is no audible output or the input selected is off.
The system also sounds great to me and the speakers are a clear audible upgrade from the 20 year old budget Mission 702e I had, just as the SVS SB3000 is lightyears ahead of the Yamaha YST-205 it replaced.
So....
Questions
1) Objectively am I fine with my unbalanced cables at 14m run total?
Bonus question
2) If I want to go balanced I'm tempted by a processor around the $3.5k tier (so Anthem AVM60 but I'm UK based and I've seen it normally retail £3.6k and sometimes £2.6k) to replace by receiver BUT I'm told the processors at this tier do not have particular good XLR outs and the Anthem AVM60 claim it has "True-Balanced" and by inference the competitors are rubbish is tosh, any opinion?