Unbalanced Interconnect length...
- Thread starter Chops
- Start date
Balanced connections ideally provide higher SNR and can prevent ground loops. They also reject common-mode noise such as might be generated by the digital circuitry in the streamer. If it is working fine with balanced connections I would leave it that way. Sometimes all the problems come from just one component...
IME/IMO/FWIWFM/etc. - Don
The BJC LC-1's came in today, promptly got installed about an hour ago, the amps got moved back a little so the 1m Wireworld power cables would reach the front outlets, each amp turned back on one at a time, feverishly standing by the tweeters on the Maggies, and...
NOTHING! As in nothing but sweet sweet silence!
I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting to still hear that buzzing, but it's totally gone.
The only downside, that loud buzzing that comes and goes like it's on a timer, still comes through, BUT... It's extremely quiet now. With nothing playing, you can just barely hear it at the listening seat.
So for me, this is an almost total win-win situation.
I want to thank everyone for all of the advice and suggestions! Now I can concentrate on the other needed upgrades. The fun never stops!
A slight invasion. LOL
NOTHING! As in nothing but sweet sweet silence!
I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting to still hear that buzzing, but it's totally gone.
The only downside, that loud buzzing that comes and goes like it's on a timer, still comes through, BUT... It's extremely quiet now. With nothing playing, you can just barely hear it at the listening seat.
So for me, this is an almost total win-win situation.
I want to thank everyone for all of the advice and suggestions! Now I can concentrate on the other needed upgrades. The fun never stops!
A slight invasion. LOL
Nice! And congrats.
I've posted elsewhere that you may have read, but my experience with Iconoclast, Galen, Bob and the rest of the team has been nothing short of outstanding. I highly recommend testing them. They're certainly not inexpensive, but at all levels of the line they are exceedingly high value. (Previously I was using Wire World for interconnects and Blue Jeans cable for speaker wires.)
I've posted elsewhere that you may have read, but my experience with Iconoclast, Galen, Bob and the rest of the team has been nothing short of outstanding. I highly recommend testing them. They're certainly not inexpensive, but at all levels of the line they are exceedingly high value. (Previously I was using Wire World for interconnects and Blue Jeans cable for speaker wires.)
Funny you mention Bob, since he's the one I purchased these wonderful Odyssey Stratos amps from. Met up with him to take delivery of the amps. Great guy to say the least.
And Galen gave me some extremely helpful advice on another forum about this subject.
FWIW Dept.: most of your recordings are done using balanced lines.
Balanced lines in and of themselves do not suppress even ordered harmonics. The associated equipment, if fully balanced internally, might suppress even ordered harmonic distortion, which is something entirely different. When that happens, the equipment is expressing what is known in mathematical terms as a cubic non-linearity (as opposed to a quadratic non-linearity if the circuitry were single-ended). With a cubic non-linearity, the 3rd harmonic (which is treated by the ear much the same as the 2nd in that its innocuous) will be dominant but at a level just slightly less than seen in a single-ended circuit that is otherwise similar topology. As the order of the harmonic is increased, its amplitude will fall off at a faster rate. This is because distortion is compounded less from stage to stage. So you get greater detail, since distortion obscures detail, and often smoother sound since the higher orders fall off at a faster rate compared to single-ended.
But all that has nothing all all to do with balanced line vs single-ended connections.
Buzzing...did I miss something in your earlier posts?The BJC LC-1's came in today, promptly got installed about an hour ago, the amps got moved back a little so the 1m Wireworld power cables would reach the front outlets, each amp turned back on one at a time, feverishly standing by the tweeters on the Maggies, and...
NOTHING! As in nothing but sweet sweet silence!
I have to be honest, I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting to still hear that buzzing, but it's totally gone.
The only downside, that loud buzzing that comes and goes like it's on a timer, still comes through, BUT... It's extremely quiet now. With nothing playing, you can just barely hear it at the listening seat.
So for me, this is an almost total win-win situation.
I want to thank everyone for all of the advice and suggestions! Now I can concentrate on the other needed upgrades. The fun never stops!
A slight invasion. LOL
There is always a perception that even order harmonic distortion, especially of the second order, is euphonic. This has been debunked by psychoacoustic experiments. When second order distortion was added gradually, listeners started to notice a "muddying" effect. No listener actually preferred having second order harmonic distortion compared to the original signal. However, it took a much larger amount of this harmonic to become noticeable when compared to higher order harmonics, esp. of the odd order. This is because of the masking effect of the fundamental.
The tone of a violin is >50% second harmonic. If the second order is removed, it will be very noticeable. I have never noticed any difference in the violin tone between a single ended preamp and a balanced differential one (I have Allen Wright's RTP-3C, RTP-3D, and the single ended version FVP-5). A balanced differential circuit will produce less second order harmonics than a single ended circuit, but well designed circuits should not produce noticeable amounts of second order harmonics anyway, balanced or not.
Yes, but this argument, as always, proves too much. This is an argument for using playback equipment and techniques no better than the recording equipment and techniques.
This sounds correct to me. I've been describing the theory incorrectly. I should've been focusing on the possible sonic effect of balanced inputs and cables suppressing even ordered harmonic distortion.
I took "most of your recordings are done using balanced lines" to suggest the traditionally pro-audio-type argument that there is no logical basis for implementing on playback audiophile techniques or components when the recording did not employ those (presumably superior) techniques or components in the first place.
In other words just because recording studios used balanced lines does not tell me that my ears might not prefer the even ordered harmonic distortion from single-ended cables in my playback system.
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Ah.
FWIW the cables won't affect the even or odd ordered harmonic distortion in your system. It might interest you to know that one of the more common tape machines used to record a lot of the Golden Era (1958-1960) recordings in the US was the Ampex 350 transport, equipped with the venerable Ampex 351 electronics. The electronics were almost entirely single-ended except inputs and outputs which were handled by transformers.
As I said before, the cables won't have any effect on the distortion, although its very possible that you might get less cable artifact from a balanced connection (if you've ever heard differences between single-ended cables during an audition, this is what I'm talking about). This is particularly true if the electronics (like the Ampex I mentioned) support the balanced standard. Its almost like having no cables at all. Now how your electronics drives the cables might have an effect. Its perfectly possible to drive a balanced line using entirely single-ended circuits. I had custom output transformers made for me that allowed me to build an entirely single-ended set of microphone preamps that had balanced inputs (using Jensen transformers) and a balanced output, using a transformer that was driven by half of 12AU7 (which is a dual triode). The preamps made a 2nd harmonic as their primary distortion product and the cables didn't affect that at all. The real trick here is how to drive balanced lines if all your gear is single ended; the most practical way I can think of to do that is by using transformers.
What do you think about replacing the BNC connectors with RCA on a 50ohm H+S cable, and using it as a pre to power amp interconnect? I guess it will depend on the impedance and bandwidth of each component?
But, there are no “free lunches” - in exchange for that, balanced inputs and outputs also require additional transformers, which can degrade sound quality. Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is quite common. It’s why Nagra, for example, recommends RCA if possible.
Wow, old thread!
At audio frequencies RF impedance is irrelevant. Huber+Suhner makes good stuff, likely overkill for audio, so I'd be hesitant to cut it up. Typical 75-ohm (video) coax works well and has lower capacitance than 50-ohm cable (it is widely used for analog audio, probably because it is cheap in bulk). Over on ASR I ran some simulations showing the bandwidth of various interconnects (link in my sig).
HTH - Don
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Differential circuits can be active or passive. Active differential circuits do not require transformers; they are intrinsically "balanced". Theoretically differential circuits offer a 3 dB improvement in SNR (signal level doubles, but uncorrelated noise only increases by sqrt(2), a net 3 dB gain), rejection of common-mode noise, and cancellation of even-order distortion. All subject to circuit design and implementation, of course.
Good transformers should be audibly transparent but are pricey (to me anyway, e.g. ~$1200 for Jensen last I checked). Note balanced circuits are not necessarily differential and the benefits I describe are fully realized with differential circuits; quasi-differential and impedance-balanced circuits typically offer less resistance to noise and may not realize the other benefits of fully differential circuits.
RCA should be fine in most cases IME/IMO; most high dynamic range RF systems (my day job) are single-ended, and well exceed audio systems' dynamic range, though wideband (multi-Gbit) serial links are usually differential. For audio, I tend to use differential/balanced connections when needed for long runs such as mic and line cables in a live venue or recording studio (professional audio), and in my home system for my rear subwoofers since they are on a separate AC circuit and differential connections break the ground loop otherwise formed. My power amps, which are near my processor, are also connected using differential (XLR) cables but previously used RCA with no noticeable difference to me. The rear subs buzzed until I went to XLR (balanced) connections.
FWIWFM - Don
I have heard that about their recommendation of RCA, but I have never seen it written down.
Is the hit taken at the low frequency 20 Hz end, or at the high frequency 20 kHz end? Or everywhere?
(And I thought that they prided themselves on their transformers, and their built-in SUTs.)
Yes, but you have 2X the number of parts with balanced connections. When everything else is designed to get the lowest noise, lowest distortion, etc, then XLR ends up degrading the sound quality. That's the idea behind the comment. Not really an issue on lower-end gear.
I have not personally compared as you would need the same cable in both XLR and RCA, and I would rather listen to music than perform this test.
The theory is that any noise entering the cable gets in equally into both wire of the XLR.
So the “Common Mode Rejection Ratio” (CMRR) means that the XLR has lower noise.
Or are you saying that the connectors have noise? Or some other of the “twice as many components”?
Well I have a mixed HT and 2-channel setup.
The AVR spits out its channels as XLRs.
The pre-amp has both RCA and XLR inputs and both XLR and RCA outputs.
However the “pass through” on the preamp is XLR-in to XLR-out.
So… unless I want to have the “haus-boss” have to turn on the preamp, then I need to run the XLR into the amp.
And I have still not seen anything written down by them saying that the RCAs are better, I have only heard it here, and via another person.
A dealer said that the XLRs are better, so at the moment it is a 2:1 ratio recommending RCAs, but they both sound equally fine to my good ear.
Component count is a function of design; many designs have differential internals to provide better performance after the input stage and before driving a single-ended output stage. Most SS and some tube designs have a differential pair at the input so no hit in component count if they ran differential, but a number of tube products are (or were, I have not looked recently) single-ended, so the statement is true for some designs.
Actually a differential ("XLR"***) circuit will have lower distortion, greater noise rejection, and higher SNR compared to an equivalent single-ended circuit. But for audio components the biggest benefit is usually noise rejection and that is only when you need it. And of course a top-notch single-ended design may beat a poor(er) differential design. Too many variables.
There's much more to it than the cable, but either implementation is so good these days that, unless you have a real need for balanced, not much point in spending time worrying about (or testing) it.
*** A XLR connector does not guarantee a fully differential circuit, or even fully balanced circuit, so I tend to use differential or balanced rather than the connector type when discussing the differences.
FWIWFM/IME/IMO/my 0.000001 cent (microcent)/YMMV/etc. - Don
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