XLR vs. RCA - Which is better and why ?

[Chip]

Since i've ordered a Ref50 - Ref200.5 combo and the Ref50 has balanced in's & out's, i would like to know which termination is preferred by most people in the know. I'd like to know what the difference is between the two terminations, how small or big those differences could be and lastly, since the Ref50 has the option, which should i get ? Just for the hell of it, how do Bullet plugs compare as well ?
I'd like to hear from Lexman (obviously) and anyone else here who has any thoughts. Thanks guy's..




Chip Engle


"Concrete ain't a spectator sport"


<a href="http://www.htguide.com/bilder/index.cfm?fuseaction=arkivbilder&userid=0&selected userid=336" target="_blank">My HT

[David Meek]

Chip, congrats on the purchase! Those should sound sweet.

The balanced connectors seem to be the preference of the cognosticenti as they offer a bit better sound, or so I've heard.




David - HTGuide flunky
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[Kevin P]

A balanced configuration has two signal wires plus a separate ground. Unbalanced (RCA) provides only one signal wire, and the ground doubles as the signal return. This makes a balanced configuration more resistant to noise and interference, especially with long cable runs. Also, the XLR connectors are more robust than RCA connectors. For these reasons, XLR is often used in professional applications where cable runs can be long and susceptible to interference.

Since your combo has balanced ins and outs, I'd use them where possible (such as between the pre-amp and amp). I have XLR Bluetigers between my BFD and Peavey amp I use for my SVS sub in my HT, and it works great.

KJP




Official Computer Geek and Techno-Wiz Guru of HTGuide - Visit Tower of Power
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[Chip]

Thanks guys,

Hey Kevin,

I have eight Blue Tigers going from my SACD player (Sony SCD-C555ES) terminated with the locking RCA's and they work great too.




Chip Engle


"Concrete ain't a spectator sport"


<a href="http://www.htguide.com/bilder/index.cfm?fuseaction=arkivbilder&userid=0&selected userid=336" target="_blank">My HT

[Eduardo]

Thanks for the lesson Kevin. I never understood balance and unbalanced but you expained it so that even a dummy like me can grasp the concept.

OT: Hey chip where in South Jersey are you from. I grew up in Freehold and my cousin lives in Barnegat.

http://home.nc.rr.com/ejimenez

[PMazz]

Does the Ref50 have balanced and RCA or do you have to order it one way or the other?

Pete

[Chip]

Eduardo,

I'm in Audubon, right near Cherry Hill. I used to go to Englishtown alot for car shows when i was younger. As far as Barnegat goes, well, i fish off the Doris Mae outta Barnegat all the time in the summer. My girlfriend owns a place 20 minutes outside of Long Beach Island.




Chip Engle


"Concrete ain't a spectator sport"


<a href="http://www.htguide.com/bilder/index.cfm?fuseaction=arkivbilder&userid=0&selected userid=336" target="_blank">My HT

[Chip]

Does the Ref50 have balanced and RCA or do you have to order it one way or the other?

Pete

It has both Pete. Right outta the gate.




Chip Engle


"Concrete ain't a spectator sport"


<a href="http://www.htguide.com/bilder/index.cfm?fuseaction=arkivbilder&userid=0&selected userid=336" target="_blank">My HT

[Lex]

Gee, I swear I thought I posted here, man, must be dreaming them now.

Finally, Chip is getting a machine he can be happy with! It's been exausting! LOL.

What I personally like about XLR's is the directness of the signal path. the pin style connections means there's no barrels getting in the return path. To me, that is really a better design. More resistant to interference, really, it is the preferred connection for long commercial runs, so it certainly should be a great connection for shorter residential runs as well.

If given the option, I would likely go XLR, but I would certainly try RCA as well, just to see what sounds best in my system.

Lex

[PMazz]

Chip, if you ever feel the need to demo your new toy, I'm only about 45 minutes away.

Pete

[Victor]

XLR connectors do certainly spell out “quality”. However, in my view you must have a very good reason to prefer them to the more mundane RCA connectors. I can see the need for XLR-type wires if you are really concerned with the noise. That concern might be very real if you must have very long, like greater then 150 feet, wires or your equipment is located very close to the electromechanical gear like a fridge or an electrical motor or rather large transformer.

So in your typical residential setting the XLR balanced connection between the audio components are absolutely superfluous. The balanced interconnects do not ‘improve’ the sound if they are simply used only because they are available. There is also another point I want to make. In order to facilitate the balanced connection your pre-amp or a processor must have an extra signal processing circuit. The purpose of this circuit is to invert the signal so that both phases are now available for a balanced connection. On the other end of the signal chain, at the power amplifier end, we must have another extra signal processing circuit in order to convert this balanced signal back into a single-ended form. A differential amplifier does this. My point here is that if you use standard single-ended RCA connectors, none of those extra circuits are necessary and consequently no extra noise is added to your system.

Well, naturally, another point is that if you happened to have a truly balanced electronic gear throughout, then XLR are the only sensible choice, but such audio components are nearly non-existent, unless you build them yourself. I know of a few mega-buck Krell and Levinson amplifiers that use a fully balanced topology. You need to spend more then $10k in order to get them. The benefits of such expenditure are rather questionable anyway.

Vic

[JonMarsh]

Victors comments are very relevant for the majority of home gear as produced today. Unfortunately, for these designs, balanced inputs or outputs are added as an afterthought, and are not integral to the circuitry or design concepts. Typically an extra driver converting from the single ended circuitry used in the unit is employed for the output, and a "receiver" circuit is used to convert from balanced input to the single ended circuit used internally. An example of this construction is the big Sony SACD players, like my 777ES, which has balanced outputs using an additional conversion/driver stage. The single ended outputs sound better.


Balanced transformerless reciever circuits as well as most direct balanced output circuits tend to not have the highest common mode rejection, particularly not at high frequencies, so their noise cancellation or rejection suffers in comparison with a good transformer balanced circuit. The drawback to balanced transformers is cost- good ones are not inexpensive, and its something of an arts to make a clean wideband audio transformer with the desired bessel roll off in the high end. Jensen transformers is a company that knows how to do this, which is why I've used in them in several of my projects, such as the X1 Klone active crossover, or my homebuilt DAC project.

An area which is somewhat different (in my feelings with regards to balanced circuitry) is when the circuit inherently has a balanced input and ouptut topology, and balanced differential operation is an integral part of the design. Then, no additional signal processing/dirver stages are used, and the balanced circuitry (if designed well) should have clear advantages in noise rejection as well as distortion reduction.

Examples of units with this type of construction include all Ayre amplifiers and preamps, the Ayre digital products, the Aragon Palladium amplifier, Pass Labs X-Series amps and preamps, my recent DAC buffer/preamp board, etc. There are others I've read about, but you get the idea- it has to be a ground up design implementation instead of a tack on.

One might argue about whether it is the balanced inputs or the balanced signal path interally (even with single ended inputs), or the overall circuit topology which makes the difference, but I think overall it's a necessary and desirable combination which is very synergistic in behavior.

Best regards,

Jon




Earth First!
_______________________________
We'll screw up the other planets later....

[Victor]

Jon,

You know what completely skipped my mind is the fact that when we use differential amplifiers in order to do the balanced to single-ended conversion we really are trying to emulate a transformer. Naturally, a well-designed transformer is a way to go.

During my ‘let’s build everything balanced' craze, I went overboard trying do design the differential amps with better then 100 dB CMRR (common mode rejection ratio) at 20 kHz. I matched those resistors with a 14-bit DMM and 4-wire approach. Well, a simple transformer would have been better, but I wanted to go ‘electronic’ all the way.

I ended up modifying my CD player with a push-pull D/A arrangement per channel, and then using 2 identical anti-imaging filters per channel. I then built a fully balanced pre-amp with a ladder-type step-attenuator and power amps to boot. I then built a fully balanced active crossover for my Carver Mark IV speakers. The speaker drivers ended up being bridge-connected. Picture this, - 4 fully balanced 200-Watt (4-Ohms) amps! Nuts!

In the end I realized that the gains of a fully balanced processing did not justify the expense. But what the hell, I new I had the state of the art system and that counted for something. Did my system sounded different or better? No. I now put a lot more time into speakers and I do not worry about the balanced wires.

Vic

[brucek]

I'm going to give my vote to using balanced connections if they're provided. It just seems to be the most reasonable method of transmitting a signal on a high impedance interface.

Generally, balanced connections are a must in a recording studio where there are miles of cables criss-crossing each other. It would be a disaster to use single ended in these applications. Off-times, my system from the rear, with its morass of cabling, looks worse than a studio. But in any case, balanced connections are a recipe to have a quieter system.

Balanced connections certainly provide superior isolation against external interference and reject any noise that may want to jump a ride on the cable from any number of sources. Radio Frequency (RF), noise from dimmers or fluorescent lighting, AM/FM radio transmissions, mutual inductance from proximity cabling can easily cause interference with your signal. A wire connected to a high impedance input is simply a great antenna......

Obviously this sort of arrangement has to be well done with matching input impedances and high quality differential amplifiers and precision resistors for matching the two channels because there is a lot of chance for distortion from a difference amp. If one channel handles the signal differently than the other, distortion will be introduced into the resultant output signal. But, this is a fairly well understood method of transmission. Today, usually single chip differential transmitter/receivers take care of all this rather nicely. There's little need to add extra circuitry in excess of the single ended method. The positive channel of the difference amp is simply used for the single ended driver/receiver. If manufacturers are using extra circuitry to add balanced outputs, they better return to the drawing board - too weird.

I just feel the advantages of balanced connections beat single ended, hands down.
- The connector is clearly superior. You can doll up an RCA connector with spinning barrels and split pins, but it's still a crappy connector.
- The ability to affect independence of the chassis ground from the signal ground.
- Balanced connections run higher levels over the line.
- You don't complete your circuit over a shield and barrel.
- You have the ability to run long lengths to your power amplifiers allowing them to be placed close to your speakers to accommodate short speaker wires.

Anyway, my vote goes to balanced.

brucek

[abz]

Hi,

I have been using Accuphase components for a little while now. My DP-500 cd player and E-407 amplifier have been connected using Chord Signature interconnects. I have been happy with them but found the image to be muffled at times. I tested the system on some rogers LS5/9 speakers and the image was better. Using my Harbeth 40's the system sounded muffled and discovered noise associated at the higher frequencies. I concluded the rogers produced a more precise image down to the early roll off at the lower and higher frequenices, hence less distortion. After reading this forum and many others, also knowing my components have full balanced interconnect capability I decided to go down the balance route. To be honest I was not expecting an improvement at all. After purchasing some Balanced Accuphased XLR interconnects ALC-10 I found a huge improvement. The image has really tightend up and shifted from slightly off centre to central, everything is pinpoint. The distortion has totally disappered and the low and top end are very precise and clear. I was always apprehensive to turn the volume up using the RCA interconnects, now I find what ever volume I increase to the overall image is stable and distortion free. Remember I changed from a 1m RCA to a 1m XLR, the difference is there! Its worth a try, sometimes you may spend £1000 on an interconnect trying to look for improvements, the answer may be present in a much cheaper alternative. If your system posesses full balanced capability you may be in for a nice surprise. Later I may try the Accuphase ASLC interconnects, any suggestion on better XLR interconnects?

[Kevin P]

Any suggestion on better XLR interconnects?

This site is sponsored by CAT Cables - http://www.catcables.com - the cables are top notch quality (hand made) and sound great too.

[Thatch]

I have a mish mash of gear and like it that way. I bought a used Marantz preamp with surround so I could use any and all types of amps and integrated amps to do the HT with while waiting for the DLP to die so I can move up to true HD (on the cusp with 1st gen DLP but no HDMI so no HD) and I like different speakers to do different jobs and have a 2 ch rig separate from the HT set up. This preamble is getting to the question; On the RCA vs XLR, though there seems to be advantages to the XLRs I haven't really noticed it used at places like TheSHOW in Las Vegas at the tube high end hotel where the small hand made businesses show their wares. Is this because there is no history with hand made gear and XLR or am I just missing this,
The LSAF in Dallas is coming up quick and I wil be asking questions about this with the cable makers. I am a DIY kind of guy mainly because I can make extremely high quality cables myself, not to mention knowing about building speakers, tube gear and have friends who do phono stages, DACs and other things I can't get my head to wrap around enough to own.
I noticed Vampire XLRs amoung a friends box of Vampire goodies, and he has to buy a certain amount to maintain a dealer classification even if he is using it mainly for his own goods.
I would like the professional explanation about how the XLRs are wired as some of my gear can be set up with XLR connections. I think making some interconnects using the XLRs on both or one end would be a good thing to try since I have a roll of the wire Vampire used to retail, then the Bottleheads had, now it takes 5 grand to order up a batch from Taiwan and is very hard to get. I do it for fun and sound, but am not sure how I would braid for XLR. Doing RCA I braid 2 wires positive, 2 wires negative, use no silver, the Vampire RCAs are OFC as is the wire, I even grind of gold for a copper to copper solder joint, though some tin is in there. The wire has to be pretinned using a solder pot before using it as well.
The question, how many wires to braid?
Chimera Labs makes these but no longer sells the wire as it was being bought up to rewire pro recording booths and he needed it to make his custom cables. Personally I think he should name his cables things like Kraken, Bride of, and other monsterous fables of old to see if he gets sued by the guys who took the Halloween costumes and gags to court over his use of titles, and other fun tails of Newt.
OK, I am getting sleepy, but what is the wiring difference, especially if doing a real braid, not twisting pairs of twisted pairs, like old 6 strand telephone cable (have a spool of that too.

Thatch

[mjb]

The question, how many wires to braid?

Thats the million dollar question! From wikipedia:

Twisted pair’s susceptibility to electromagnetic interference greatly depends on the pair twisting schemes (usually patented by the manufacturers)...

[impala454]

Sorry this is off topic but this has to be the record for oldest dug up thread! 8.5 years!

[mjb]

Sorry this is off topic but this has to be the record for oldest dug up thread! 8.5 years!

Lol, and proves our comments last forever - I should remember that!