Balanced Vs Unbalanced Instrument Cables

The main difference comparing balanced vs unbalanced cables is a balanced cable has 1 additional conductor.

Balanced vs unbalanced instrument cables.

Henry ott february 07 2005 in discussing the characteristics and performance of various interconnect systems. Unbalanced cables aren t good for doing long cable runs for this reason in fact you should be using balanced ones if the cable needs to be more than 10 15 meters long. In truth the main advantage an unbalanced cable has over a balanced cable is the cost. A balanced audio cable has a ground wire but it also carries two copies of the same incoming audio signal sometimes referred to as a hot positive and cold negative signal.

Below is a diagram showing the difference in tips. As you can see there is a big difference between unbalanced and balanced quarter inch cables. Any noise picked up along the cable run will typically be common to both legs. The added safety of the balanced cable comes at a cost and even after you make the purchase you still need to pair your cables with.

The diagram above shows how the cable works. The 1st conduction is the audio signal itself and the 2nd is a ground and often a shielding. The concept of the 3 5 mm tip is the same as a quarter inch. This is especially true if it needs to be used in an environment where there s a lot of lights and other stuff that could cause interference.

Both legs carry the same signal but in opposite polarity to each other. Two points should be kept in mind. A balanced electrical signal runs along three wires. Unbalanced cables work great for connecting a guitar to an amp for instance but because they are not very good at suppressing noise from outside interference unbalanced cables should have a maximum length of 15 20 feet 4 6 meters especially when used in noisy environments and with signals that are low level to begin with such as those from keyboards guitars mp3 devices and so on.

A ground a positive leg and a negative leg. Unbalanced cables by dr. Unbalanced cables depending on their quality might be anywhere from 30 60 of the cost of their balanced counterparts.