Balanced Or Unbalanced Cables For Synth

I m trying to understand when to use balanced and unbalanced cables once and for all.

Balanced or unbalanced cables for synth.

The diagram above shows how the cable works. Unbalanced cables aren t good for doing long cable runs for this reason in fact you should be using balanced ones if the cable needs to be more than 10 15 meters long. A typical unbalanced cable like a 1 4 instrument cable has 2 conductors. Some higher end synths may have xlr output jacks which are balanced and balanced cables are what would be used.

The only other synth i m sure of is unbalanced. I have a roland jv1010 sound module and an m audio usb audio quattro that i need to hook up. The advantage of using balanced cables to connect between balanced outputs and balanced inputs is that balanced connections have better noise rejection thanks to a second inverted signal that has equal resistance to ground as the initial signal this inverted or reverse polarity signal is used to cancel noise and to make the signal more robust. The roland instruction manual does not mention whether i should use balanced or unbalanced cables.

Most audio interfaces have inputs which are properly wired to support both balanced and unbalanced 1 4 connections although some are auto switching while others have a physical line inst switch line balanced inst unbalanced. All others are unbalanced outs and ins. It s the sequential circuits pro one it doesn t give sound if you put in a balanced jack. Just use good quality ts to ts type cables.

You can with some caveats. The main difference comparing balanced vs unbalanced cables is a balanced cable has 1 additional conductor. The 1st conduction is the audio signal itself and the 2nd is a ground and often a shielding. This is especially true if it needs to be used in an environment where there s a lot of lights and other stuff that could cause interference.

If the synth has 1 4 6 3mm jacks for outputs they are very likely unbalanced and using balanced cables will not be of a benefit. A balanced audio cable has a ground wire but it also carries two copies of the same incoming audio signal sometimes referred to as a hot positive and cold negative signal. Use unbalanced cables when you have unbalanced instrument outputs. The balanced cable will have 1 hot 1 cold and a ground shielding.

The structure of a balanced audio cable is similar to an unbalanced cable with one addition.