opaqueice;200220 Wrote: > Cliveb and Tom, how would you characterize the balanced versus > single-ended difference - was it a noise floor issue like that, or was > it a significant change in the music? Did one clearly sound better? I hate trying to use "audiophile" terminology, but here goes. To my ears, the difference is that balanced operation somehow makes things sound more solid, "meatier", more "organic". The timbres of instruments have greater texture. For reasons I can't fathom, bass seems better defined. Balanced definitely sounds better to me, but of course "better" is a subjective term - I have no idea which is more accurate.
Speculating, I wonder whether even short runs of unbalanced interconnect are vulnerable to interference - not at a consciously obvious level, but perhaps enough to smear very low level detail. It's the only explanation that begins to make sense to me. And finally, bear in mind that these observations are within the context of my own system - a pair of ATC SCM100A active monitors, which have built-in power amps with balanced inputs. The interconnects (whether balanced or unbalanced) are about 5 metres, so they probably count as "medium length" - perhaps long enough that unbalanced is at a disadvantage. -- cliveb Performers -> dozens of mixers and effects -> clipped/hypercompressed mastering -> you think a few extra ps of jitter matters? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ cliveb's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=348 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=35068 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
