Cable Question: balanced/unbalanced

[Dolemite]

OK, I'm about to make a purchase of some decent cables (or make my own decent cables) and I have a bit of a dilemma. All my gear that doesn't connect digitally is balanced/unbalanced (meaning it adapts to the connection) with the exception of my synths, which are all strictly unbalanced. Given the predominance of balanced gear, I'll mostly be investing in 1/4" TRS balanced cables. However, I'm left wondering how to connect the unbalanced synth outputs to unbalanced/balanced inputs. If I use balanced cables, will the input switch to unbalanced properly or do I need unbalanced cables? As I understand it, the Ring needs to short to ground on the input in unbalanced operation, and I'm not sure if this will occur with balanced cables. Any advice on this situation is appreciated, and also on the topic of DIY vs. premade cables.

Thanks

 

[warlock]

Well you could make most of them balanced for your balanced gear and some unblanced so you can connect your unbalanced equipment aswell.
But AFAIK, balanced cables used on unbalanced equipmenmt work as unbalanced cables, because there is no R on the unbalanced inputs, so the R and S are shorted automatically on the cable.

I hope I made some sense,
Keijo

 

[Chriss]

most mixers can use both i believe. I know mine can. It has got nothing to do with the cables anyway. Regular balanced 1/4" cables can be used for both balanced and unbalanced outputs.
The ring is simply not used if it's not neccesary.

 

[skippy]

Well, actually, the cables can have a lot to do with it, if you are trying to build your rig for the minimum possible noise floor (and are therefore trying to control and/or eliminate ground loops, RF leakage, and other cruft).

It's not particularly hard to do, but just connecting everything together with unbalanced cabling opens you up to more problems than you really need: you want to go balanced to balanced wherever you possibly can. And when you need to interface balanced and unbalanced, you should ideally do slightly different things depending on which end is unbalanced. For basic studio interconnect (like the multitrack to the board, for example) it pays to do the groundwork to get this right, right up front.

Here's a very good reference for connecting everything to everything else. Take a look through it, especially the portions describing ground loops:

http://www.rane.com/pdf/note110.pdf

If there are still questions remaining, let us know. Like everyone else, I sometimes use unbalanced cabling to just hack a piece of balanced gear into my rig temporarily. But for critical recording, and especially when establishing the basic default setup for a studio (the permanent paths that your signals will run though the majority of the time for the life of the studio), you want the interconnect scheme to be as clean as possible. A lot of home recordists don't regard this as very important, but pro studios invest a great deal of time and effort in this when they are being created...

 

[Chriss]

cool. thanx. I've simply bought all the way balanced cables, and it's been working ok, but granted, there is some noise issues on some gear.