Just a couple of questions from the experts on the forum about balanced and unbalanced cables.
I recently purchased Studio Monitors and this balanced and unbalanced business is enough to drive an O.G. like me, nuts!!
I bought 2 monitors with 8 inch drivers and a 10 inch subwoofer. The instructions say that everything must be balanced cables and to plug in a balanced cable from (whatever source ie: console or DJ mixer - in this case it would be from a keyboard) to the inputs on the sub and then balanced cables from the outputs on the sub to the inputs on the monitors. That part is not a problem but will balanced cables coming from the keyboard even work? If this is what is needed then I can get some but I've never used balanced cables from a keyboard to any kind of speaker or amplification system.
Any help as always is much appreciated.
O.G.
Balanced, Unbalanced Cables
Moderators: Sharp, X-Trade, Pepperpotty, karmathanever
Most powered speakers will accept either an unbalanced or balanced input signal. You neglected to give the brand and model of your speakers, so I can't say how they are designed to handle unbalanced signals. Usually they have a 1/4" jack for unbalanced input and an XLR for balanced input. Technically, cables aren't balanced or unbalanced - they either have one shielded conductor for unbalanced use, or two shielded conductors that can be used for balanced or unbalanced signals. Balancing is done to the signal on the sending side to go over a signal pair plus ground, which is then received and converted back to unbalanced inside the component (using a differential op-amp to cancel out any common-mode noise that got added to the signal during the trip). Unbalanced is usually fine to send from a keyboard to speakers because it uses a hot, line-level signal and the distances aren't usually very long, so the standard shielding of the single signal conductor is good enough to reject most interference. Many devices that accept balanced signals will work just fine with unbalanced instead, although perhaps with a 3dB loss of volume compared to balanced. In other words, you can usually send unbalanced signal output to a balanced input device, some way or another, either through separate jacks or a bal/unbal switch. If for some strange reason the speaker really do only accept a balanced signal, then you can convert the unbalanced signal from the keyboard using a DI box, a balun adapter, or a powered mini mixer that has a balanced output.