Comments on: Balanced vs. Unbalanced: Prepared for Rejection

By: Dan Connor

Dan Connor — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 22:20:00 +0000

I guess it depends on the quality and type of the USB device. USB isn’t an analog connection – it’s not even a digital audio connection, strictly speaking. It also has bus powered voltage running through it…

By: Andritch A.

Andritch A. — Tue, 11 May 2010 01:15:43 +0000

Cool…now what about usb connections? balanced? unbalanced?

By: Dan Connor

Dan Connor — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:14:20 +0000

That makes some sense.

By: TeamScottSmith

TeamScottSmith — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:22:24 +0000

I’m sure Rode’s intent is to eliminate ground loops. Having a cable run from one bit of equipment with it’s power source, across a distance to another bit of equipment using a different power source,can create hum in the line. There can be a difference in potential between the two equipment grounds, that is equalizing itself through your cable’s ground wire.

I wouldn’t build all my cables that way, I would deal with ground loops on a case by case basis. In a studio’s permanent wiring, I probably would drop the ground at the source end and tie it at the destination end, to avoid ground loops.

By: Dan Connor

Dan Connor — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 18:52:45 +0000

@ CHiTT Productions

Thanks for the kind words! Funny you should mention that – one of my topics to write about in the future is ‘Making Your Own Cables’. For XLR cables, I’ve always done a ‘signal ground’ such as you describe, grounding to pin 1. While I worked at as an intercom technician at Telex Communications this is how we did it there, too. Rode’s assertion makes no sense to me, either. I can’t think of how that would be useful… unless maybe it was ‘signal gounded’ on one end and ‘chassis grounded’ on the other.

Hope this helps. Thanks for reading!

By: CHiTT Productions

CHiTT Productions — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 08:59:32 +0000

I’ve returned to this site several times because it’s given me a few tricks I would have never thought of myself. Thanks.

I have a burning question that I’ve never been able to find a definitive answer for in all my years of audio engineering, and maybe you can shed some light, or at least wonder out loud with me– perhaps an “intermediate balanced” post in the future?

I make my own audio cables because it’s cheaper and I’m not independently wealthy. My question is what to do with the ground on an 3 pin XLR cable? When dissecting factory manufactured XLR cables there doesn’t seem to be a standard method for terminating the ground wire: on some cables the ground is a “signal ground” and only connects to pin 1, and on other cables,the ground wire is jumped to the chassis (creating a “chassis ground”). Right now I’m just making cables with a signal ground running all the way through from pin 1 to pin 1 with no jump to the chassis.

Reading the literature from Rode doesn’t help because they suggest everyone is doing it wrong and the only way to properly balance a 3 pin XLR cable is to completely disconnect the signal ground on one end of the cable (can’t remember which gender is unterminated off the top of my head). This practice doesn’t make the least bit of sense to me. AES literature is unforthcoming too and there seems to be a lot of infighting in the industry and no true standard yet. What gives?