balancing my lines

[troll]

I've been wondering for a while what the heck balanced lines are. What makes then balanced? Noone I asked ever had a good answer. They always said that it had something to do with TRS or XLR cables, and stereo, but could never tell me what made them balanced. I finally got off my lazy butt and looked it up.

So now I know that a balanced signal will send the signal on both the tip and the ring of a TRS cable and then combine the two identical signals at the other end with a different phase. Doing so eliminates the extra noise the signal will pick up on the way through the cable. Does the phase change happen in the cable? Or do I need a balanced connection (both for output and input)?

What would I do if I wanted to take my unbalanced outputs 1/4" (tip/sleeve) and my unbalanced inputs RCA (tip/sleeve); and connect them with a balanced line?

Also, I am soon getting a patchbay stating that it is fully balanced. Does this simply mean that the connectors will accept TRS cables for use with either stereo, or balanced signals? Or if I connect a 1/4" tip/sleeve cable to one end and a TRS cable to the other, will the signal become balaced?

Is there an adapter anywhere that can make a single unbalanced signal balanced and then convert it back at the other end?

I just want to know for sure.

 

[glimmer_doll]

lol

I thought balanced lines meant you do one up each nostril for even dispersment of drugs to both sides of your brain

what kind of studio are you running over there...?

 

[troll]

delta 1010 and cooledit pro through a pc.....

it's adequate for what I use it for, but I can always improve it.

Even though it probably wouldn't be worth balancing all my lines, since I'm not running them very far, but it would be nice to know how.

yeah...

 

[ds21]

I wish it was just a cable swap...

I don't know if in your seach you saw this but it looks to explain a lot:

http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/ampins/balanced/balanced.htm

 

[lpdeluxe]

Check out Gary Davis' "Sound Reinforcement Handbook". I'm amazed that everyone doesn't have a copy of it. He'll explain balanced to you and everything else.

 

[starch]

These are great questions troll. A balanced line has 3 wires, hot cold and ground, and the hot and cold carry the same signal only out of phase with one another. An unbalanced line has 2 wires, a hot and ground, hot is obviously the signal. This being said, you can create a cable with an unbalanced connector on one end and a balanced connector on the other (ie, xlr to ts or trs to rca) but, in this instance,the line will always be an unbalanced line. An adapter will not balance a signal, it will only change the connector to allow you to connect to different input types.
Beware, if you are going to change connector types that you watch levels (mic, line, power). Never interchange these! If you try to connect a line level input into a mic level input, or power level into line inputs, you may be in for trouble.
I don't know if I made things more confusing for you, but I tried.

 

[troll]

I'm pretty sure that a direct box is the thing I was looking for. it has an unbalanced input with a balanced output. So I can just run an xlr to my 6 balanced inputs on my mixer. I think this will work the way I want.