Balanced or single-ended i/c?

Hi

Recently bought a Bryston BP25 and a 4B-SST, and for the first time in my hi-fi life... balanced connections.

Given that the preamp/amp are internally single-ended and that I plan on using short i/c runs (1m or less), am I going to see any significant difference between a balanced vs a single-ended interconnect?

Balanced cables pretty much reduce noise between the components right? That would mean with such short runs that there should be very little picked up and the balanced cable's benefit is reduced??

The cable I plan on buying (Audience Au24s) are quite pricey in XLR versions so was hoping to save the $$$. (There's 2 on Agon though...)

 

Balanced my good man every Time, I would audition the Au24 first, they are a bit nice and polished hifi-ish, although a few guys prefer over Valhalla (Prefectly understandable btw). I found them to err on the most hifi presentention side of things and the expence of the music. Congrats on your purchace too. a bit of a shock after using cyrus I should imagine. Wm

 

I already own a pair of Au24s and I'm quite happy with them, so was basically gonna go for either the RCA or XLR versions to go between the amp or preamp.

What I plan on doing is to buy a cheap pair of Hosa, UXL or Van Damme XLRs and compare them with other cheapy RCAs. If there's a huge difference, then maybe I'll spring for the Au24s or the Conductor XLRs.

I haven't picked up the amps yet, still in delivery.

A 60W weakling vs a 300W monster? No contest!!

 

Balanced versus single-ended is likely to be a more significant difference than the brand of wire (unless the brand is "strangely-engineered"). Get something sensible and balanced - I think.

 

Bear in mind that in this case (short signal runs), there is little benefit to the balanced configuration. Add to that that the componentry is interally single ended, and you end up adding two extra stages into the signal path (inversion for the -ve balanced at the pre-end, differential amplifier to return to single-ended at the power end) and you may find that any noise benefit is swallowed up by the additional circuitry. There's no substitute for trying it yourself. However, I have consistently found the single-ended inputs on the S300 to be better than the balanced, due to avoiding the differential amplifier circuit (the only op-amp used in the signal path in the entire amp).

 

Speaking from personal experience with Bryston and short cable runs...

 

I have the BP20 and 4bst. I use a VDH balanced the second, but I have tried the VDH ultimate the first single end. Can't say that I noticed much difference on short runs. I also have a four metre pmc balanced cable which I beleive is made by van damme who supply pmc with the cabling for studio installations. I haven't tried this yet as I do not need the length. I prefer the balanced only because of the secure connection.

Rod

 

There's a very good article about balanced vs single ended archived under 'Pete's rants' on the Walrus website, worth a read.

 

Anyway, gave it a trial, making sure that I set the gain correctly for single-ended vs balanced.

UXL Balanced XLRs (1m) vs Nordost Solar Wind (0.7m)

No difference in practical application.

The only noticeable difference is if I put my ear to the tweeter I can hear a teeny bit more noise on the single-ended.

Which is good, since I won an auction for some single-ended Audience Au24s this morning!!