Most, if not all, powered speakers are going to have balanced inputs. This makes sense as you're running a low level signal some distance to get to the speaker location. A balanced line has dramatically greater ability to reject induced noise.
The input may be presented as an XLR jack or 3 conductor 1/4" jack. On professional gear a line level balanced input is normally +4 dbm. Consumer gear with RCA type line connections are -10 dbm, significantly lower level. In my case (SB3 feeding Behringer powered monitors & subs) I use a small Soundcraft mixer to bring the unbalanced -10 dbm outputs up to a balanced +4 dbm level. In the pro world one can also buy dedicated line matching amps to make such signal adjustments. But there are many, many small mixers with unbalanced inputs and balanced outputs (Alesis, Soundcrcraft, Behringer, Peavy, Yamaha, Mackie, M-Audio, etc). These are often cheaper. In both cases they have very simple signal paths and sound utterly transparent. I am surprised at how rare it is to find powered speakers in a consumer listening space. They make perfect sense as the amps can be exactly tailored to the drivers. The use of line level crossovers and bi-amping make a huge difference to playback accuracy as well. Michael -- mgraves ------------------------------------------------------------------------ mgraves's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4078 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34484 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
