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Is balanced necessarily better?

Assuming fully balanced equipment that also offers single ended connections, and no RFI problems, is the use of balanced interconnects necessarily the better way to go? My forum search indicates some who say balanced is better because the connectors are inherently better and because of noise cancelling properties associated with the signal flowing in both directions; and others who say for reasonably short runs and no interference problems that rca/single-ended connections sound better in many cases, maybe because the signal has less circuitry to traverse. This has come up for me because I am considering different preamp alternatives, and if I decide not to stay with a fully balanced system, I have more choices. To give things a try I substituted some old AudioTruth rca cables for my Luminous Sychestra Sig balanced cables. Except for the 6db loss in output, I have initially found the rca cables to sound a little smoother, with more rounded images, a little plumper bass, and what initially sounds like a more "musical" presentation. The system is a Muse Model 10 source/Muse Model 3 Sig pre/McCormack DNA 500/Aerial 9's. BTW, Steve McCormack told me the DNA 500 sees the signal the same way whether balanced or single-ended, and didn't seem to think the amp would sound significantly different either way. Therefore, even though many manufacturers are now offering more balanced equipment, especially at the upper end, others such as CJ continue to make only single-ended equipment. What are do you guys think, is balanced necessarily better?
mitch2

Showing 2 responses by bigtee

bigtee
803 posts
 
My thoughts are if the equipment is truly balanced and allows for a truly balanced connection, run it that way. Why do you want to go through a process of changing it to SE? It's like going from SE to balanced, why go through the added splitter or whatever to get it when it really want sound a bit better, if as good? My point is, keep things simple.
My Calypso preamp takes anything single ended and converts it to balanced internally. Therefore, why would I not want to run balanced interconnects so it wasn't required to do that.
I definitely think there's more to the picture than noise. The up or down conversion is an issue also. I trust manufacturers like Ayre, Theta, Aesthetix and others who say balanced is better with their equipment. I know they have done their homework.
bigtee
803 posts
 
McCormack uses a transformer (Jensen I believe) to perform this task in his upgrades. You can read about it on his sight. That is an extra conmponent. The Sony SCD-1 used a circuit to derive balanced and it didn't sound as good as SE. As I said, I've been messing around with this stuff and some sound better balanced, some worse and some sound better SE. There ways to implement this and it's not all about noise in all cases. Some implementations degrade the signal. All you have to do is listen for yourself.
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