balanced cables

[paresh]

Hi - I've heard that I can improve my sound by getting TRS (balanced) cables - less noise, lower distortion. Wd they be useful for connecting FX to mixer, mixer to sound card, or for a guitar cord? They're expensive! Thanks.

 

[skippy]

Balanced cables are only part of the equation: what you want for lower noise is balanced _interconnect_. Which means that the sending device has to drive a balanced signal on its outputs, and the receiving device has to be able to accept a balanced signal on its inputs.

So: if your mixer has balanced line inputs and outputs, and your FX boxes or sound card have balanced inputs and outputs, then by all means use a balanced cable to complete the interconnect. But if your gear only has unbalanced (single-ended) ins or outs, you are arguably wasting money springing for a TRS cable to stick into a TS jack at each end.

The place where balanced lines are truly critical is for signals at microphone levels: connecting a mic to a preamp needs all the help it can get in terms of noise rejection, and modern low-impedance mics are designed to drive a balanced signal down to the preamp.

You really _don't_ want to use a TRS cable for guitars or basses with high-impedance, single-ended outputs. TRS cable as a rule has higher capacitance than good guitar cable, and that higher capacitance can and will roll off the high frequencies from your guitar if the cable is long enough. For this special use, use single-conductor-with-shield cable that was specifically designed for high-Z instrument use.

 

[paresh]

awesome! Thanks so much.

 

[Light]

The place where balanced lines are truly critical is for signals at microphone levels: connecting a mic to a preamp needs all the help it can get in terms of noise rejection, and modern low-impedance mics are designed to drive a balanced signal down to the preamp.

Balanced lines are also critical for long runs, as well as any other situation where RF interference is high (such as near major radio towers).


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K Gandhi

 

[skippy]

Sure. But by the time we get to that point (and I've been there more than once- check out https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18148 ) we're a long way away from entry level, introductory stuff. And then we have to think about nasty and expensive items like transformers, bump boxes, and other such nerdy dreck. All of that is stuff that you and I may love, but a person asking about basic interconnect may not really want to know...

Hoipefully, most of us with home studios will have very few (if any) line-level runs that absolutely _have_ to be balanced to make the rig work at all (and those will probably need to be terminated into a 600-ohm load to _really_ work, and we sure as hell don't want to go there now!). Lots of people stress out over this topic, and most of them don't need to- until the studio spreads out over half a city block, or is located within 100 yards of the WBZ ground radials (;-).

 

[SonicAlbert]

paresh, skippy gave you a good answer, to which I would only add a little bit. This probably seems really obvious and not worth a mention, but you'd be surprised how many people don't do this:

Always use the correct cabling for your gear. In other words, if you have balanced gear, used balanced cabling, if you have unbalanced gear, use unbalanced cabling. If you are wiring balanced gear to unbalanced gear, or vice versa, use the correct cabling. In that case, that means custom cables that are wired properly internally. There is some gear that can accept either TS or TRS jacks, and in those cases you can use either cable with no problem. But if you are running between TS unbal and TRS bal gear, it's best to use the right connector cables.

Also, as skippy mentioned, balanced cabling is not better just because it's balanced. If your gear is unbalanced, then there's no advantage to using balanced cabling. Also, if you only need short cable runs and aren't near a major source of RF, then unbalanced is fine.

Hope this helps.