Balanced versus single ended

balanced is good for studios to get rid of hum issues. which was it’s orignal intent.

Beyond that, it is a degeneration in sound quality, due to how it functions, how it works, how it is designed. (twisted pair in reflection and differential)

If one is not using it for long microphone lines, or hum reduction along said long line of very fine signals... then it has no place in home audio and is inferior to single ended.

and that’s a fact.

The supposed 6db lift comes at a price of loss of quality of micro signal aspects.

with the elctrical signal itself.., all you hear and all you aim for in high end lives entirely within the qualities of the micro signals and micro differentials in signal... and that is the part that balanced makes a mess out of.

this can falsely be perceived as a quality advantage as it is out of step and separate, exaggerated above and outside of the main body of the signal..., in the same way that class d makes a mess out of ultra fine detail and we hear that and.. imagine it as being higher quality. When, emphatically, neither are. Digital can and does do the same. Tubes get that fine peak and transient micro detail right, as does an LP, as does a horn.

Horns can be used to dramatically explain and show this human hearing issue, as a horn will do the leading positive transients correctly and then they distort the other parts of the signal to the tune of 25% to 40% or more distortion.

Yet, we don’t hear that, we hear those perfectly launched main and micro peaks, off the mouth and throat of the horn itself.

the same human hearing problem exists in our takes on balanced being superior, class d being superior and digital being superior. In these three cases, the micro fine transient and positive (transient delta/peak) data is garbled and messed up and we hear this as a separate thing, above and outside of the main body of the signal. we perceive this patterned distortion as signal and then think we’re hearing real detail, when we’re actually hearing exaggerations and distortions.

depending on the skill set and speed of intellect and the basic hearing condition of the given person, either they hear it for what it is, or they don’t, or they might take time to understand this.

But these conclusions are inevitable, real, and part of what we deal with in high end audio.

High end audio fell into the trap of thinking that if it is pro, it is superior. No, not true, not true at all. Balanced is for hum control and noise control for very tiny signals over long lines but it has squat to do with the extremes of perfection that high end naturally seeks.

It is an initially cleaner and more detailed sounding package but eventually, one will finally, if they grow and keep learning in audio, hear it for the fundamental mistake that it is.

Note that balanced exists in the big sellers in audio, but the reality, in any distribution curve, in any market or area or psychological grouping, is that the mass market aspect or the big companies do not represent peaks in quality or what not, they represent the main central bulk of the masses. They are not the peak, not the actual peak. They are just the peak the masses imagine.

So no, balanced is NOT the way to go when truly seeking real and actual peaks in quality. Of course, none of the biggest audio stores and the biggest magazines and the biggest audio companies in volume and advertising want to hear any of this, as it is against the market and the perception they’ve all built up in this juggernaut of insanity and other associated desires.

However, Teo Audio did fix the fundamental flaw that is the electromagnetic problem - that balanced cables are... simply by using liquid metal in balanced cables. Due to the way they work in electromagnetic fundamentals, they are unlike all other balanced cables and thus sidestep the fundamental problems of balanced cable distortions.

FYI, I have had conversations with very accomplished audio designers who will, in private, say the same thing. Where they came to the same conclusion.

I don't particularly enjoy saying these things and it can be bad for business to engender such negative emotions cast at us...but what do you want?

Do you want me to lie with a straight face while I rub your nipples and try to slip a fiver out of your pocket, or do you want the truth that lies at the end of the road? What's it gonna be?

@atmasphere

Hey ralph, I’d mention a name on the whole balanced vs single ended thing, but he did not throw his hat into the public discussion ring, so I can’t. Not like it would mean much other than making them a participant outside of their knowing or permission.

In the conversations with him, I mentioned that, in my mind, for balanced to work at it’s best, it should be designed in layout (from the active transmission end and at the active receive end) with an RF design and build mindset, where the field effects are a major consideration, down to the board mounting points and any local potential of the chassis and circuit boards in having any additional field effect interference. Just for the sake of the last little bits of attainable perfection in actual gear. Also, that these active aspects should be mirror imaged against one another and that includes a localized short run mirrored power supply for said mirrored circuit halves.

If one opens up some high end equipment and in especially pro gear, one will not see this attempted, at all. And, this, done out to about a 1mhz level of signal handing capacity in the active circuits. Only then will the active circuitry be able to handle the micro perturbations well enough to damp/control them out to being largely below the complex sensitivities of the human ear, in the best of the listeners out there. Spectral, for one, tends to do things this way. There are others. (the designer I speak of, who agreed with this assessment, is responsible for some high level studio gear as well as home audio)

Then there is the argument that the AES48, as an application is a sonic limitation in itself, and is part and parcel and core to the idea that all AES48 applications have little noted differences in their sonic signatures.

I’m not stating that this, which I have written...is the correct view, but that it is among the possible outcomes in the grand scheme of things.

The idea that the signal intelligence is in the fields and if the field guides/’partners in crime’ be compromised in identical fashion (via strict ubiquity in AES48 design and application), then...well...