Balanced output ? (1 Viewer)

[Mariusz Filonowicz]

I'm pretty new to seperates world and I noticed in some equipment specs mentioning balanced vs. unbalanced versions. What does it mean? Is it the same as balanced outputs on multichannels processors and if not what's the difference between these two. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ling_w]

Balanced and unbalanced versions usually indicates whether the piece of hardware (whether it is amp or preamp) could accept balanced inputs. To feed that balanced input, you upstream component would have to have balanced output. A balanced connection has 2 hot connections as opposed to 1. The 2nd hot connections are phase inverted so that noise that is picked up by the cables would cancel each other out when they are combined again. So a balanced connection would reject noise better and is used more frequently for long runs.

A true differential gain stage would be best to take advantage of balanced input, where the seperate legs of the signal are amplified individually instead of being combined and run through a non-diff gain stage. Same with balanced output, utilizing differential gain stage instead of single-ended plus a extra phase inverter stage at the output.

 

[Mariusz Filonowicz]

Thank you Ling