Balanced To Unbalanced Cable Wiring

The structure of a balanced audio cable is similar to an unbalanced cable with one addition.

Balanced to unbalanced cable wiring.

After removing the outer plastic layer you might encounter one of two things. Unbalanced positive wire shielding. 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. The cord depending on quality might have just a braided shield like that of the unbalanced cord above but it also might have another foil shield for double the protection like the.

Always use balanced cable two internal wires a hot wire and cold wire plus a separate screen. 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. 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. We ve spent the past few insync issues detailing exact cable wiring diagrams so hopefully by now we can spare you the drawings and discuss concepts because we have a lot to cover today and limited space for it.

Balanced cables have a bit more inside. Today we ll temporarily conclude our thread on cable wiring with suggestions on how to wire balanced outputs into unbalanced inputs. 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. Unbalanced cables depending on their quality might be anywhere from 30 60 of the cost of their balanced counterparts.

If you re wiring to a stereo jack use two balanced cables not one.