Balanced vs Unbalanced Audio | Do Balanced Cables Sound Better?

What's the difference between balanced and unbalanced audio? Does balanced audio sound better? Which cables do you need? XLR, TRS, TS, RCA? In this video, you'll learn how balanced audio works and hear a demonstration of balanced vs unbalanced audio quality!

0:00 - Introduction
0:22 - Why Use A Balanced Audio Connection?
1:00 - Balanced vs Unbalanced Audio: Cable Construction
1:38 - What Is A Balanced Circuit?
2:21 - Balanced Audio Explained
3:56 - A Common Myth About Balanced Audio
4:33 - Demonstration - Balanced vs Unbalanced Sound Quality
5:24 - Subscribe To Audio University!

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[adrianbowles]

Kyle - as a “recovering academic” (former computer science and business prof) I know that one of the hardest things to do when explaining a topic is to decide on an appropriate level of detail. Your videos are excellent - short enough to cover a single topic in enough detail to help the viewer but long enough to give a memorable example (like the hum in your long cable audio example). Keep up the good work.

[leetingler]

I'm a bit older than you! Ha!
When l was a kid
Balanced cables were able to go 600 feet or more. Unbalanced went 10 feet w/o losing the high frequencies.
So 1/4" was for things like guitars and interconnects for audio equipment.
The ballanced was for Mike's and long distant ballanced audio connections.
If we got interference from RF we made a circular loop of cable to act as a choke.

If we got hum the rule of thumb was to separate the audio cables from power lines 6-10 feet so no induction happened.
And not to run parallel runs and if you had to cross you crossed your lines at 90 degree angles.

But I'd say you did a good job of explaining it. 🙂

[BillWhitlock-oewr]

I just saw your presentation on balanced vs unbalanced. First, thanks for the reference to my work. Second, and the reason I'm writing, is to give you a big thumbs up!! You got it exactly right! In my nearly 30 years of teaching seminars on the subject of system noise, I'm always amazed by the number of technicians and engineers (even textbooks) who cling to the idea that signals on the balanced lines must be of equal level and opposing polarity - this is a provably wrong idea that just won't go away! Thanks for helping to dispel the myth!

[curtisjudd]

Thanks for this, Kyle. This is the best breakdown and demonstration of balanced interconnects I've seen. Great sample audio, too.

[BryanTorok]

I have an electronics engineering degree and still found this informative and useful. The video representation of noise and signal were striking.

[Grottzopp]

As a music teacher, I must say you explain this much better than I could’ve ever done. I’m inspired! Great use of visual aids and a perfect amount of detail, depth and length of the video. I will definitely show this video to my students!

[thebluriam]

This might be one of the most clear, intuitive, and interesting explaination of something technical on YouTube. I don't think I've learned so much in such a short video ever...

[Wordsalad]

I'll save everyone time. They don't sound "better". Balanced cables remove noise from the signal. The vast majority of consumers don't have noise in their signal.

[Stephen.Bingham]

A pretty good effort at a complex subject. A couple of points - (i) The impedance of the line will be mainly determined by the input impedance of the “receiver” not the resistance of the wires. (ii) Probably the main point about balanced connections is they guarantee a phenomenon called ground loops is avoided in which very large currents flow through a circuit formed by the shield and the ground connection, which in turn generate noise voltages if the signal is also carried by the shield. Your illustration generates a lot of noise because it creates a ground loop. In fact unbalanced connections will usually do better than this test suggests because they are designed to have only a single ground connection and hence break the ground loop.

[fathomsdeeper]

When I started in audio, I was in school to become an electromechanical technician. Learning the use of Op Amps in analog servomechanisms, turns out to be VERY useful in professional audio. They are exactly the same! You start with the input transducer (mic), which gets amplified (pre-amp), then filtered to stop any hunting (EQ), then summed with other error signals (mixing), then to the power amplifier, and then to the servo motor (speaker). While most industrial operations can use basic op amps like the 741, the TLO82 is also verry common. The TLO82 is used almost universally in professional audio due to it's very low noise. It's found in all pre-amps, filters, summing amps, and VCAs. The TLO84 is a dual or quad version of the TLO82, but has higher noise due to having multiple amps in one package. That's why high-end boards like the Cadac were so freaking heavy, but almost dead quiet! And you could fix them on the fly, unlike digital.

[Zarathustra-H-]

Very good video. Balanced cabling is really all about removing noise when operating in electrically noisy environments. Unfortunately way too many in the audio community equate "more expensive" with "higher sound quality", which is not the case with balanced cabling at all, unless you have a noisy environment.

[jimshaw]

Better than most of the explanations I've heard and seen.
A little history: balanced lines are nothing new to audio. They are just new to consumer audio. Balanced signal lines, microphone and line level, have been used by broadcasters and in motion picture production since the 1930's. And it is for exactly the benefit you describe: noise cancelling. In pre-1970's or so, microphones and input circuits used small transformers to attain the balanced connection (and make changes to the impedance).

Since then, audio transformers have become unfashionable because of their bits of distortion they introduce. You can conjecture that you must have purity -- even if you're recording Britney or heavy metal, eh?

In consumer audio, one good purpose of balanced is to reduce noise in long signal cables that run from preamps to powered speakers. And, they're cheap -- you can use XLR microphone extension cables.

[musicman]

When I purchased an amp-preamp combo with balanced connectors I went balanced, and the difference was real, I also use balanced on my phono stage hookup to my pre-amp, since that is inherently balanced . The way to go, really

[RAGEMETHOD]

Thank you so much for including an actual comparison between the two. I've been looking for someone that'll actually let us listen to the sound since I've been having this problem with my xlr cable. I'm getting the same buzzing sound. I think there's a problem with the cable since, sometimes, the buzzing will stop after I've moved the cable around just right, even though I didn't really do much moving. The information in the video is good to know when I go out to look for a new one. Thanks again.

[dansenn]

Off topic some, I greatly appreciated the straight presentation style. A nice speaking voice, excellent articulation with incisive content. It did the job efficiently. So many instructional YouTube videos with speakers using “awesome” colloquialisms while bopping endlessly around is offensive even while it has become the norm. Frankly, I was astonished by the presentation style and now I know a little bit more about balanced and unbalanced cables! Thanks!

[jordanwilliams]

What you're describing is called "phase cancelation" that is what I got from your quoted info. This is more about electromagnetic frequencies and their vibrational relationships and less about electronics/electricity or wires. You can experiment with this by taking two speakers and and playing the same hz through both but flip the polarity of one and you will hear a significant drop in SPL. This is also used industrially to calculate and dampen vibrations in exhaust systems or large assemblies, or bridges, by calculating the resonant frequency. Same way you would measure a room and wavelengths to know where to put your baffles or bass traps for acoustical treatment. By being balanced, any electrical noise would be "in phase" and thus like you said, induces noise cancelling because the waves traveling through the wire physically cancel each other out at their end. Good video!

[cattnipp]

Love how you don't have an annoying, repetitive, and completely useless self-serving channel into clip - you get right to the subject!!! Well done!!!

[meade]

even though these are things i already understand, i still love watching these videos to hear it explained by others (not just this but everything i "think" i understand already LOL). Subbed!

[timurbabakulyev]

Good work, thx man. You're the first one mentioned the fact, that balanced cable's not necessary should have two signals on + and - in antiphase

[matthewsouthworth]

MAN, thank you for this! I'm ashamed to admit how long I've been a musician who just couldn't make heads or tails of what "balanced vs unbalanced" means, and I FINALLY get it. Thank you thank you thank you.