Diving into balanced

mtbiker29

Here is what I've settled on after a bunch of trials: RCA 1 to 1.5 meters, XLR 1 to 1.5 meters, power cables minimum 1.5 meters up to 2 meters, HDMI I2S 1 meter or less, SPDIF 1 meter, USB as short as is feasible

I’m making the jump to separates and as such am thinking that balanced is the way to go.

When I got into separates the amp and preamp I decided to go with were balanced. I didn’t think much of it at the time and ran everything unbalanced for about a year. I had some balanced cables laying around so one day just for poops and giggles I decided to set my system up to run balanced. I wasn’t expecting much change if any…well, I couldn’t have been more wrong, to this day and several changes and upgrades later, going balanced remains one of the top two most significant changes in sound quality improvement that I have made. Now having said that, all of my gear meets the AES 48 balanced protocol or the British equivalent. If your gear does not meet those standards you may get different results.

As far as cable length, I also would go with the longer cable. It seems that for me one units output is always on the opposite end of the next units input, so you not only have to contend with the distance up and down between units, but possibly left to right also.

• I personally have decided to go with balanced interconnections are minimal distances. 
• My system (Moon) is designed for balanced interconnections are this results in a 6db gain for the signal.

I have decided to use shortest distance. It saved costs on my cables.
​​The additional consideration for me is I don’t want built in optionality for my ‘next upgrade’ to my system. I want to enjoy now versus pine for the future. (I know myself and have gone through 3 sets of preamps, amps and DACs and 2 sets of speakers over the last 5 years. 
 

Your mileage may vary, enjoy the music!

@mtbiker29

There's a fair bit of misinformation here. Since we've been doing balanced lines longer than anyone else, perhaps I might set the record straight:

1) the advantages of balanced lines have nothing to do with length whether 6 inches or 60 feet.

2) there is a balanced line standard called AES48. If the equipment does not support the standard, you may hear differences between cables; this is why balanced vs RCA is a debate, which really shouldn't happen. But most 'high end audio' equipment does not support the standard hence debates...

3) In a well designed balanced system there isn't extra circuitry- in fact you may have less stages of gain than single-ended. For example our balanced preamps have only 4 stages of gain (despite passive equalization in the phono) between the LOMC input and the main output.

4) balanced, if properly done is better than RCA connections and if you get to hear that difference there's no going back. Balanced lines ushered in the golden age of high fidelity in the 1950s. Prior to that everything was single-ended requiring the recording equipment to be right beside the musicians.

5) phono cartridges are balanced sources. Since balanced line gives you more neutral connections, this is a big incentive since if there's anywhere in the system that the cables have to get it right, its between the tonearm and phono preamp input. No matter how good the system is it can't make up for colorations that RCA cables inevitably cause. 

I have a totally differentially balanced system from phono cartridge through amp.   It is quiet even with volume turned high.