Does balanced interconnect sound beter than RCA?


I'm in the process of upgrading my system and looking at new/used integraged amps. The amps i am considering are the sim i-5, the plinius 8200 mk 2, perreaux 200ip and the classe cap151. Some have have both balanced and RCA connectors for the CD player and some don't. Can you hear the difference of the Balanced connection versus the RCA connection? It seems that their is a lot of very expensive equipment that does not have balanced connections which would seem to indicate that it doesn't necessarily need to be there. Is it worth getting an amp or cd player that can utilize balanced connections?
thanks,
jmillen
jmillen

Showing 2 responses by eldartford

Buscis2...Lots of interesting ideas there, but I just don't think there is much relevance to home audio equipment.

Your reason #3, relating to power supply demand, does not (IMHO) have much relevance to low level (eg: preamp) circuits, where the power requirements are so small that a very modest capacitor will smooth things out. However, in a power amp there are very real benefits from running the two channels of a stereo amp out of phase. Since most of the stereo signal is common mode (mono) this evens out the draw on the plus and minus supplies. Of course, one speaker wire must be reversed to restore proper phasing at the speakers. Some amps meet their published rms power specs, both channels driven, when the drive is out of phase. This is usually in very small print, if at all.

A balanced line interconnection obviously makes it very easy to accomplish the required polarity inversion of one signal.
Balanced lines provide imunity to noise pickup, and are of great benefit to pro sound folk who work with a tangle of long wires. Their benefits are mostly irrelevant in the home audio situation.
The higher voltage signal (4 volts vs 2) would tend to help. However, if your preamp has good output voltage capability, (most do) one can crank up the gain in the preamp, and lower the gain in the power amp, and run single-ended lines at higher voltage. I do that.