Balanced XLR or RCA for my caspian?

Associate
Joined
22 Mar 2014
Posts
1,560
Location
Plymouth
As per title interested in knowing if a balanced XLR connection would result in significant sound quality improvement over my current Chord Company C-line (0.5m) which connects my Caspian + DAC (says it has balanced xlr) together? Thanks in advance
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
7 Dec 2010
Posts
8,249
Location
Leeds
Balanced is pointless unless your entire system is balanced.


That's rubbish.

Balanced from your source is always going to produce better sound and reduce any noise generated by other equipment near by and I find the balanced cables have better frequency over the full spectrum.

Why do you think professional equipment has XLR ?


At any point you can add balanced cables in your setup the better and you will reduce the noise floor.


All my professional music gear Keyboards and studio monitors are connected via XLR for this reason as RCA raises the noise floor and can introduce radio frequency interference too as they act like aerials.


So the advice is if any part of your audio equipment has balanced connections use them.


These are the cables I use for XLR from this company they are nice and flat and produce great sound I found compared to others and are very sensibly priced for the quality, check some reviews about this company.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00H95XJT8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I also use these for the short runs of under a 1m and seem to work great too for the money compared to other more expensive ones:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Female-Bal...7052&s=musical-instruments&sr=1-1-spons&psc=1

I also use Chord Company C-line cables in my setups too and they are great too but RCA vs XLR is a totally different thing it's unbalanced vs balanced, balanced always wins.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
29 May 2010
Posts
6,351
Location
Cheshire
I'm not sure what "better frequency over the full spectrum" is supposed to mean, and the benefits of balanced are by no means as cut-and-dried as some might have you believe.

Professional gear uses balanced because, in the main, it helps with earth loops and noise rejection and long cable runs in electromagnetically noisy environments, and because it's robust. It's not primarily about sound quality in professional gear.

There are some technical limitations with balanced, such as the way that the phase inversion isn't perfect in the ultrasonic region which is said to affect frequencies lower down in the audible range. There are also some practical ones such as the quality of the circuits involved. In some gear they're not great and can degrade the sound for the sake of fashion.

Because of the way the summing of the two signal channels works, balanced produces a louder signal, and it's easy to interpret that as better.

The bottom line is that the results of balanced versus unbalanced depend on a number of factors. A well-designed single-ended connection using properly shielded cables may well be the better choice, particularly where the two bits of gear are essentially unbalanced circuit designs with a bit of bolt-on circuitry to add balanced connections because it looks a bit premium. You've got to suck it and see. Listen for yourself, just remember to adjust for the volume difference if present so that you're making a proper comparison.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Sep 2016
Posts
9,514
When I used rca to rca for my ATI amp with bp-2x I got hiss bit with rca-xlr flipping the switch on the ATI the hiss was gone. Difference in amp gain difference between voltage XLR and rca, and speaker sensitivity?
 
Back
Top Bottom