Balanced Line Cable

Balanced audio technology is designed to reduce the effect of environmental noise on the quality of the signal.

Balanced line cable.

Balanced cables have three wires inside the plastic casing. One of the signal wires gets inverted which allows the cable to completely avoid picking up outside interference. But what makes a balanced cable special is the way the gear utilizes that. Two of those wires carry the signal while one carries the ground.

Balanced cable types xlr. However this did not become widespread until repeater amplifiers became available. As in the unbalanced cable the ground wire still surrounds the signal wires and is used as a shield against interference. Unbalanced cables however only have two wires.

The cable construction used for balanced telephone cables was twisted pair. A balanced cable by contrast has three conductors in the connector and three wires in the cable. Balanced xlr connectors have 3 pins. As you see in the diagram above there are three male pins inside the connector the groundwire the hot signal and the cold signal.

Mic cables are a good example of such situations. Unbalanced line level connections are usually implemented with rca jacks for audio while balanced line level connections typically utilize dual 3 pin xlr jacks for both the input and output. For an unamplified telephone line a twisted pair cable could only manage a maximum distance of 30 km. A quarter inch trs cable is another balanced professional audio cable.

The signal wires pass an identical audio signal through each wire while the surrounding ground wire works the same as in unbalanced cables shielding the signal wires from external electronic interference. Balanced audio cables work best with balanced devices. Two signals wires plus a separate ground wire. Balanced cables have three conductors and three wires.

Balanced connections typically use shielded twisted pair cable and three conductor connectors. Xlr cables can send balanced audio signals up to 200 feet. Balanced audio is a method of interconnecting audio equipment using balanced lines this type of connection is very important in sound recording and production because it allows the use of long cables while reducing susceptibility to external noise caused by electromagnetic interference. Open wires on the other hand with their lower capacitance had been used for.

Both legs carry the same signal but in opposite polarity to each other. The difference in signal quality between balanced and unbalanced setups is especially pronounced in longer cable runs. In both cases one jack is normally used for each audio channel left and right. The longer the cable the more noise introduced.

A balanced electrical signal runs along three wires. Any noise picked up along the cable run will typically be common to both legs. A ground a positive leg and a negative leg. On the other hand short cable runs carrying higher signal levels are less prone to audible noise.