MiniDSP now! TLS Guy post reinforced lol. (the diy part lol)
In all seriousness, it's interesting times!
There is still some advantage to XLR, even if not fully balanced.
One of the biggest advantages is that re-assuring "click" when the XLR is seated in the connection properly and positively re-enforced.
Good point, agreed.
There is common mode rejection and wouldn't that mean that you can buy a less expensive balanced cable than higher priced uber-shielded unbalanced?
- Rich
Strangely, lots of times the balanced cables have the same (or more) shielding than RCAs, perhaps to prevent abrasions in professional applications. Microphone breakout cables are sometimes tiny, though. (and expensive, from all the terminations)
I believe the input stages are balanced in the Halo amps.
The balanced switch when set to unbalanced shorts on a leg so Parasound has the switch for the balanced input.
Ah, that's legit. Then the balanced connections have a purpose: they're able to accept a balanced output properly and send balanced signal properly / without using external DI boxes.
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Another biggie for balanced connections is if you have sensitive speakers (especially like my 100db/w + ones!), pretty easy to pickup noise in a signal chain that would otherwise not be a problem on 90db/w speakers or thereabouts.