Balanced versus single ended

As many have stated, the design of the gear plays the biggest role in the differences heard from balanced and unbalanced.  I have a fully balanced system from the streamer, the DAC which is specifically designed to perform best with an AES input being used and balanced outputs.  My DAC, Pre and Amp all sound noticeably better when everything is hooked up with XLR balanced cables.  But, that’s because of the design of the equipment, all the pieces in the chain were designed that way.  There are plenty of high end designs that aren’t designed to be fully and truly balanced, those pieces can sound better than balanced equipment.  
 

I have heard some manufactures downplay or state unbalanced implementation is as good or better.  Primaluna, Kevin Deal states this in some of his famous video reviews.  I think the general rule of thumb is if your equipment is designed to perform at its best using balanced input / outputs, you should listen to the manufactures and plan accordingly.  If they aren’t or specific pieces of gear in your chain aren’t, you shouldn’t worry about going unbalanced or feel like you are missing out.

Synergy is real, it is a good idea to try and match up equipment that maximizes the design of other pieces of gear in the chain.  

@atmasphere 

Hey Ralph,

You absolutely convinced me that I did not need an expensive IC when using your amps and preamp. Has that changed now that I am using my AGD amps?

Do you know if AGD supports the balanced standard. And do cables make a difference when amp and/or preamp do not meet that standard but use an XLR IC?

balanced is good for studios to get rid of hum issues. which was it’s orignal intent.

Beyond that, it is a degeneration in sound quality, due to how it functions, how it works, how it is designed. (twisted pair in reflection and differential)

If one is not using it for long microphone lines, or hum reduction along said long line of very fine signals... then it has no place in home audio and is inferior to single ended.

and that’s a fact.

The supposed 6db lift comes at a price of loss of quality of micro signal aspects.

with the elctrical signal itself.., all you hear and all you aim for in high end lives entirely within the qualities of the micro signals and micro differentials in signal... and that is the part that balanced makes a mess out of.

this can falsely be perceived as a quality advantage as it is out of step and separate, exaggerated above and outside of the main body of the signal..., in the same way that class d makes a mess out of ultra fine detail and we hear that and.. imagine it as being higher quality. When, emphatically, neither are. Digital can and does do the same. Tubes get that fine peak and transient micro detail right, as does an LP, as does a horn.

Horns can be used to dramatically explain and show this human hearing issue, as a horn will do the leading positive transients correctly and then they distort the other parts of the signal to the tune of 25% to 40% or more distortion.

Yet, we don’t hear that, we hear those perfectly launched main and micro peaks, off the mouth and throat of the horn itself.

the same human hearing problem exists in our takes on balanced being superior, class d being superior and digital being superior. In these three cases, the micro fine transient and positive (transient delta/peak) data is garbled and messed up and we hear this as a separate thing, above and outside of the main body of the signal. we perceive this patterned distortion as signal and then think we’re hearing real detail, when we’re actually hearing exaggerations and distortions.

depending on the skill set and speed of intellect and the basic hearing condition of the given person, either they hear it for what it is, or they don’t, or they might take time to understand this.

But these conclusions are inevitable, real, and part of what we deal with in high end audio.

High end audio fell into the trap of thinking that if it is pro, it is superior. No, not true, not true at all. Balanced is for hum control and noise control for very tiny signals over long lines but it has squat to do with the extremes of perfection that high end naturally seeks.

It is an initially cleaner and more detailed sounding package but eventually, one will finally, if they grow and keep learning in audio, hear it for the fundamental mistake that it is.

Note that balanced exists in the big sellers in audio, but the reality, in any distribution curve, in any market or area or psychological grouping, is that the mass market aspect or the big companies do not represent peaks in quality or what not, they represent the main central bulk of the masses. They are not the peak, not the actual peak. They are just the peak the masses imagine.

So no, balanced is NOT the way to go when truly seeking real and actual peaks in quality. Of course, none of the biggest audio stores and the biggest magazines and the biggest audio companies in volume and advertising want to hear any of this, as it is against the market and the perception they’ve all built up in this juggernaut of insanity and other associated desires.

However, Teo Audio did fix the fundamental flaw that is the electromagnetic problem - that balanced cables are... simply by using liquid metal in balanced cables. Due to the way they work in electromagnetic fundamentals, they are unlike all other balanced cables and thus sidestep the fundamental problems of balanced cable distortions.

FYI, I have had conversations with very accomplished audio designers who will, in private, say the same thing. Where they came to the same conclusion.

I don't particularly enjoy saying these things and it can be bad for business to engender such negative emotions cast at us...but what do you want?

Do you want me to lie with a straight face while I rub your nipples and try to slip a fiver out of your pocket, or do you want the truth that lies at the end of the road? What's it gonna be?

As usual in situations like this, a middle ground is probably closed to the truth. Hence: "it depends." Robert Harley, in The Complete Guide to High-End Audio, concedes that, in certain circumstances, balanced connections may sound better, but that in other situations, they actually sound worse. I'll let him speak to this latter situation himself: "Say you have a disc player or DAC that take an unbalanced signal form the digital-to-analog converter chip and converts it to a balanced signal so that the DAC manufacturer can tout the product as having 'balanced outputs.' Inside the DAC, the unbalanced signal is converted to a balanced signal by a phase splitter. Phase splitting subjects the unbalanced signal to an additional active (transistor- or op-amp-based) stage and puts more circuitry in the signal path. The balanced DAC's output is then input to a balanced-input preamplifier. Because all but the very best balanced preamplifiers convert a balanced input signal to an unbalanced signal for the preamplifier's internal gain stages, the preamplifier's input converts this balanced signal to an unbalanced signal—adding yet another active stage to the signal path. After the unbalanced signal is amplified within the preamplifier, it is converted back to balanced with another phase splitter. The preamplifier's balanced output is then sent from the preamplifier output to the power amplifier's balanced input where it's—that's right—converted to unbalanced with yet another active stage. The result of these unbalanced/balanced/unbalanced/balanced/unbalanced conversions is additional electronics in the signal path—just what we don't want. This is why you can't assume that balanced components sound inherently better than unbalanced ones."