Managing Balanced/Unbalanced Interfaces

T

taylorguitarman

New member
I finally ran into my first balanced/unbalanced problems. I bought a balanced patchbay to hook all my gear (mostly balanced) and found out that the outputs of my workstation are unbalanced as well and one of my monitors are unbalanced and so is my soundcard interface (arg). So I was initially confused when the levels were so low when I hooked everything up. After a bit more re-reading (and understanding now) how do manage balanced/unbalanced connections for gear? Or do you just make sure everything is one or the other? I'm trying to make the switch to a DAW now that I've quieted my PC down and I've been frustrated trying to get everything to play nice with each other. I'm planning on getting a new soundcard (I need more inputs) so that should help but why does it have to be this confusing?
I've been thinking of getting a Big Knob for my monitoring hookups, will that do balancing/unbalancing successfully to run my CD player, PC, etc? With all those knobs and inputs it looks like it will but I'm not sure.
 
Hey Frederic!....you out there?

Lets see...maybe Frederic will chime in here. I posed a similar question to him some time ago..let me see if I can remember this correctly.

Unbalanced devices/cables only use two connections of the jack (Tip and Sleeve). Balanced devices use three connections in the jack (Tip, Ring and Sleeve). If you insert unbalanced devices/cables into a balanced jack, no problem...essentially you short the #2 and #3 (Ring and Sleeve) together which looks exactly like an unbalanced circuit which you're already working with. BUT, if you do the opposite...balanced device/cable into an unbalanced jack...oops...#2 and #3 (Ring and Sleeve) are shorted out and causes problems for the signal or worse if there's phantom power applied.


Any one else have comments on this? I'm pretty sure this is correct.
 
You've got several things occurring that have nothing to do with balanced/unbalanced signals....

First off -- a lot of playback consumer gear (CD players, MD players, cassette decks, etc...) has not only unbalanced I/O, but operate at the consumer -10dBV level as well.... pro-level gear (as well as a lot of semi-pro gear) operates at the +4dBu gain structure, which is about 12dB hotter than gear running at -10dBV -- that is the more likely issue you're noticing a difference in signal levels...

If you unbalance a balanced signal, you do sometimes lose 6dB of signal level, but that depends entirely on the gear in question - sometimes the gear will correct for the differences (ie, servo-balanced inputs/outputs)

The goal is to definitely be operating at a uniform gain structure throughout your rig - gear that doesn't match you need to accommodate. For example - I have a rack full of consumer playback gear all running at -10dBV - I interface that with my +4dBu rig by using a line mixer to input all the -10 stuff, bump the level up 12dB, and output a balanced +4dBu signal back into the rest of my rig.

You can also get line-level shifters (Ebtech) to interface gear individually if you prefer.
 
Thanks. I'm finally putting together my studio (in my new house) and I'm dealing with all the stuff I've read about but didn't really understand. I've been dealing with all-in-one boxes until recently. Looks like I'll be needing to read my manuals again and possibly buy some more gear.
 
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