balanced is inherently flawed

Sorry for the spelling and grammar mistakes. I intended to hit "preview first" but hit "submit as-is" by mistake so I couldn't edit.

9rW, you simply reworded your previous post and made the same challenges. Please see my previous response.

Thanks for all of the considered responses. The points about ground loops, rejecting internal EMI, cost of common components such as cases, systems in a noisy enviroment, the ability to closely match stages if willing to spend the money, everything is imperfect anyway, and several others are all well taken. If you are having hum problems from ground loops and going balanced gets rid of it then it is hard to make a case against it.

I read the links from Buscis and they make good arguments but since they come from manufacturers of balanced equipment I would expect no less. BTW, the first link tried to load some stuff on my computer and locked it up, but I appreciate you taking the time to create the links.

I did not mean to imply that balanced systems can't sound good. I've heard some that are among the finest. They were also among the most expensive.

I guess my main hypothesis is that since sound is inherently a single ended phenomenom, it's reproduction should be also. Of course, I am in the "simpler is better" camp also.

Although there are some strong arguments for going balanced, I'm sticking with the basic idea that taking a single ended source, inverting it and then trying to take both the original and the inverted and treating them exactly the same through a long chain of cables and amplification is going to cause more problems than it solves.

As for noise and hum, I have a single ended system hooked up to 103 dB speakers and the only noise is a very faint hiss that you have to put your ear to the tweeter to hear. It uses Naim electronics and they are not balanced as someone suggested above even though they do use din connectors. Everything plugs into the same outlet strip so I'm sure this is one reason the noise/hum is so low.

BTW, I'm listening to $19,000 Avantgarde Duos connected with a few hundred dollars of Naim speaker cable to a $1,350 Naim integrated so I may not be exactly mainstream with my audiophile preferences, but it is the best sound I've ever had in my room. If you haven't heard the latest generation of Naim stuff you should check it out.

Ed, I think you've found the secret, happy components, which to me means using your equipment the way it was designed to be used.

I checked out your system, very nice, especially those AMC Gremlins :>)

Atmasphere, welcome to the discussion

Ouch! I’m glad you decided not to flame me. It would have been reduced to tears. At first I was going to just walk away with my tail between my legs utterly defeated until I realized:

A: you misrepresented what I said about gain
B: other than the noise issue, you offer no reason why balanced is better
C: you cloud the issue with facts that have nothing to do with this issue, who cares what the phone company uses, we’re talking home stereos
D. You chastise me on the issue of balanced sources but don’t provide any. Remember, this is home stereo, not a recording studio
E: you completely ignore the heart of my position i.e. truly balanced and/or differential amplifiers introduce distortions due to the impossibility of creating perfectly balanced and/or differential circuits, especially with tubes.

Let me elaborate.

1. I never said that a balanced amp has more gain than single ended. I was attempting to refute the commonly held belief that balanced is better since the output of a balanced stage is typically louder when using the balanced vs. the single ended inputs, which most people incorrectly describe as an increase in gain instead of an increase in loudness. If I didn’t clearly articulate this then I apologize for the confusion. Just as most people confuse phase and polarity, I was attempting to minimize confusion for the vast majority of people who would describe this as an increase in gain. I know as well as you that it is not a matter of gain, but I’ll stand behind my contention that louder does not equate to better.

2. I never said that balanced doesn't have some design benefits like you mentioned, and I do understand the types of noise that you describe, but if my 103 dB speakers are dead quiet with single ended gear, how much quieter can they be with balanced? Granted, dead quiet without a signal applied is not a test of its ability to reject noise generated in the supply while under load, but it’s not that hard to build a well regulated supply. I’ll give you the fact that there is a theoretical advantage in regards to noise performance. I just don’t think there is any real advantage in practical use. If your system produces 12 dB less than nothing, who cares?

3. It is hard to disagree with your claim that “balanced lines can deliver the signal better” since “better” isn’t exactly a quantifiable parameter. Surely you can produce a more convincing argument than it is better because it is better. I’m also at a loss trying to understand your statement about balanced systems having “far less interference from the cables!” What type of interference are you talking about? Your information about transcontinental phone transmission may be accurate, but we’re discussing stereos here, not transmission of signals over thousands of miles of cables. Just because a 747 may be a good choice to get me from NY to LA doesn’t mean I would use one to go across the street. Please allow me to throw in my own “sheesh” at this point.

4. What you say about studios is true. As I stated in my original post, studios use balanced gear to good advantage, but once again, I must point out that we are talking about sound reproduction in the home, not studio recording or transcontinental phone transmissions. I don’t use any microphones or tape heads, and cutting an LP with balanced gear does not make the information on it balanced. A CD or LP or tape mastered in a balanced studio is still encoded single ended onto the CD/LP/tape.

Where are the balanced sources in a home system? A phono cartridge perhaps, but how many phono stages process it as a balanced from input to output? Even the mighty Aesthetix IO takes the balanced input and feeds it to a single ended stage before converting it to balanced. Besides, I’m not sure a phono cartridge is really balanced since used it in that fashion it is a floating source with no reference to ground. I could be wrong about that and I would enjoy hearing an explanation to the contrary.

I see nothing in your post that gives any reason why balanced gear will sound better than single ended other than the potential for better noise performance, and since my system doesn’t have any noise issues, I’ll stand behind the blather in my original post.

From your website I see you have devoted many years to your passion and I applaud you for that. After the Futterman fiasco you were either very brave or very foolish to continue down that path. I'm sure your stuff sounds swell. However, my contention is that you could have made a system just as swell or better with a single ended design and done so at a reduction in cost.

Now take a deep breath, gather your thoughts, and if you can offer something besides noise rejection, better is better, studios do it, and the phone company does it, then I will be happy to consider your response.

p.s. Sean, I’m not sure if you were agreeing or disagreeing with my contention that sound is single ended to begin with. You hear because your eardrum moves in and out in response to the increases and decreases in air pressure from some vibrating source. There is no equal but opposite pressure wave arriving at the same point in time like there are two equal but opposite electrical voltages in a balanced amp. Perhaps I’m not making myself clear or it may be totally unrelated to what we’re talking about, but I thought it illustrated my point that single ended was the natural order of things.

Thanks for taking the time to more clearly state your case. It was much better than the "it is better because it is better" post you put up earlier.

You seem to miss the big point here.

We are talking about home stereo, nothing else. Not recording studios, not the phone company, nothing but home stereo. I don't care if NASA used balanced circuits to cut down on noise. I'm not going to the moon.

I concede that balanced has advantages in the noise arena, but I'll repeat myself. If my 103 dB speakers are dead quiet with a relatively inexpensive ($1,350) integrated, who cares how much quieter balanced will be?

I concede the point, I just don't see any advantage for my home stereo.

As far as being wrong on every point, you don't seem to understand what it means to be a balanced source. I'll explain. It means you have two signals of equal amplitude but opposite polarity.

There is absolutely no commercial media available today that stores data in a balanced format. The ability to output a balanced signal means that a conversion has to be done somewhere. Even if you use a phono cartridge in a balanced mode, the data on the disc is single ended. Once again, I don't care what they use in a studio, I don't use microphones at my house.

Balanced output from a laser diode? You made that up, right? The sensor reading the reflections from the disc either outputs a high or a low depending on whether or not the laser hits a spot where light is reflected: a high or a low, a one or a zero, a true or a false. The information on the CD is stored in a digital format as data representing a certain amplitude at a certain point in time. The next data point is either, higher, lower, or the same as the data point before it. There is absolutely nothing at all balanced about any of that.

In twenty plus years I have yet to hit a dead spot on a volume control. I'll take my chances.

I see nothing in the information you presented that leads me to believe that balanced will sound better than single ended. Please note I said "sound better," not that everything else being equal it can achieve a lower noise floor.

I know we are beating a dead horse here so I'll let it go.

Good luck selling your inherently flawed balanced stuff :>)
I'll continue to enjoy my inherently flawed single ended.

Onhwy61, if you only read my last post then I can see where you come to your conclusion, but if you followed from the beginning you will see that one of my main reasons for taking the inherently flawed position has to do with the problem of first taking data that is single ended and creating an inverted copy, and then maintaining equal but opposite signals through the system.

I'll stand by that even though I did get pulled off track a bit with the noise and source issue.

To imply that the manner of detecting the logic state of the laser sensor in a CD player is in any way, shape, or form related to a discussion about balanced sources is laughable, and even though I may be the largest source of mis-information on this forum, you are embarrassing yourself with this one.

Your information about Mercury recordings in 1958 was also very interesting, too bad it has nothing to do with how the system at my house reproduces that recording.

And it is most definitely about opinion. There is no quantifiable way to determine what sounds better even if you do have a half deaf girlfriend :>) If there was, Julian Hirsch would be an audiophile god.

I have given it a straight shot. I've owned and/or listened to some of the most highly regarded balanced systems out there, I hope to hear yours some day.

Lets explore your reasons why audiophiles benefit from balanced designs:

"Lower noise
Lower distortion
cable immunity
wider bandwidth"

If lower noise and distortion are the holy grail that you make them out to be, why are you using tubes when they are inherently noisy? You can achieve even better noise and distortion figures with transistors. We went down the "lower distortion is better" road in the 70's until the end result was a bunch of high powered amplifiers with .00001% distortion that sounded like crap. I won't disagree that tubes can sound very pleasing and I would use them if I had the patience to deal with them, but you have to attribute that pleasing sound to some kind of inherent distortion, which sort of contradicts your lower distortion is better arguement.

If immune to cable differences and "sounded excellent no matter what cable you used", why do I and thousands of others hear significant differences when switching cables?

Wider bandwidth than what? The 100 kHz that your amps do is easily achieved by single ended designs.

Ralph, if I may be so bold as to call you Ralph, thanks for all of the information you have provided. I think we've run our course here, but I've learned a few things and been reminded of things I learned long ago but forgot. I may be a bit pig headed but I'm not stupid. You haven't convinced me that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but at least you've piqued my interest in your products and I would love to hear them. That can't be all bad.

And here is something we can agree on that relates to what Russ says above. One huge weakness in the standard SE scheme is the use of RCA connectors. In a nutshell, they suck, but Russ, the fact that a DIN connector has enough pins that it could be used to carry a balanced signal does not make it a balanced connector. The fact that Naim chose to address this weakness by going with a more robust DIN connector does not mean that they "provides much the same result" as being balanced. The earthing scheme may be improved, but other than that it provides absolutely none of the benefits that Ralph has been pointing out with regards to being balanced. Oh, and yeah, I listened several hours yesterday and enjoyed myself immensely. Thanks for asking :>)

OK, I'll come clean. I knew going in that my position was indefensible. After being involved with electronics on a daily basis for the past 25 years, including 10 years teaching circuit theory, I knew that if one took the position that balanced is better for any number of technical resons, noise performance, etc. that it could not be refuted. I also knew that it was impossible if they took the position that it simply sounds better since very few can agree on what actually sounds better.

So when I said that balanced was inherently flawed, what I really meant was that IN MY OPINION, even though balanced looks better on paper, single ended can sound just as good or better with simpler circuits and therefore a lower cost. Pretty much the "overkill" that 9rW mentioned.

I enjoyed Ralph's spirited response and he did indeed shoot down some of my original points that I either didn't think through very well or could not be defended if you take the "if it measures better it is better" angle.

I hope you all enjoy your balanced equipment and I'm sure it sounds great.

Do I detect a note of sarcasm?

First, I have credentials but that has nothing to do with it. All the education, qualifications, references, and published papers in the world won't change the fact that either I'm right or I'm wrong. Even an uneducated fool is right sometimes.

Secondly, a list of designers that embrace a balanced design doesn't mean anything. I can rattle off a list of well respected single ended designers that proves just as little.

Whichever side of this you land on you must admit it was an enternaining thread.

Rats, even though I agree that some of the issues raised by the "balanced is better" crowd are nonsense, I still found it to be entertaining.