Balanced vs unbalanced ins & outs (diverging into questions on various sound cards)

[Dingo]

Forgive an audio newphyte for asking a question that is probably covered in a FAQ somewhere - what precisely is the difference between balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs, and what am I missing out on if I get a card with unbalanced ins and outs?

OK, now for a sound card question (OK, it should be a seperate post, but there are so many "what sound card should I get" posts that I thought it might get lost ;-) ...

I'm looking to buy a card for some fairly basic home studio type recording (for the most part, just coming from a couple of external synths and going into CD). Initially I was interested in the Maxi Studio ISIS board, as it gives me everything I need (e-magic's logic audio software, on-board synth which I may or may not use, midi interface and a break-out box) in one neat package for about what I want to spend. But I'm a little scared off by things I've read about the quality of this board (the ESS Maestro 2 chipset, which it apparently uses, is totally dissed by www.pcavtech.com).

The yet to be released GadgetLabs Wave 496 looks awfully tempting. For what should be a similarly priced package (well, probably a little more here in Oz), I get everything I want except the software (I need a decent sequencer as well as everything else, which is why e-magic's logic audio that comes with the ISIS looks good), and apparently much better audio quality. The 496 seems to make up for all the disadvantages of the 424:

* It has a break-out box (the midi is still on the back of the card, but that doesn't worry me)
* Balanced ins and outs (which I presume is good - see above ;-)
* Input levels switchable between +4dBu and -10dBu, which might come in handy in the future.

But then I see the Audiowerk2 card, which is at a great price, and includes a version of e-magic's logic audio. But no midi (though buying that seperately would be cheaper than buying logic audio seperately though, I would guess), unbalanced ins and outs, and no break-out box (though I could probably put that together myself).

Anyone have any suggestions to solve my dilemma?

Thanks in advance,

Tim

 

[gaffa]

Unbalanced lines have two wires - hot and common. Any signal on the hot line (including interference) is what you'll get.

The balanced line approach has three lines, hot, cold and common. The hot line carries the signal, the common is the signal return(making the loop required for electricity), and the cold line exists solely to pick up interference.

The way it works is that the interefence from everywhere is picked up on both the hot and cold lines evenly, and by combing the signal from both the hot and cold (making sure that the cold line is phase shifted 180 degrees), the interefeence is cancelled out - leaving you with squeaky clean signal.

On soundcards, get a balanced line card, cos computers produce a lot of interference, and balanced lines are generally more versatile. I'm looking at the gadgetlabs 424 or 824, although I've been reading about some problems using the 424 in NT (apparently the drivers are shit). The event cards (Layla, Gina, Darla) seem alright, but I can't remember if they are balanced or unbalanced)

I'm actually using an SB Live at the moment, but I'm about to purchase.

Hope the explanation helped

If you want more, go to the rec.audio.pro FAQ at http://recordist.com/rap-faq/current. It explains a lot of this stuff better than I can

- gaffa

[This message has been edited by gaffa (edited 03-16-2000).]