Do you need all balanced leads?

We were recently involved in advising on a new project studio installation which had stalled. The original designer had been taken ill and a deadline for completion was in danger of being missed.

This gave the customer an opportunity to question some of the original designers decisions. One decision had been to install balanced cabling throughout the studio. The customer now thought that this was an unnecessary expense because all his hardware synth modules, samplers, drum machines and keyboards had unbalanced connections.

Of course he was right, the unbalanced 1/4” jacks on this gear weren’t capable of balanced connection and it seemed pointless to install leads running to his balanced mixer and patch bay  with expensive balanced cabling when only 2 cores would be connected.

This led him to question whether some other connections needed to be balanced, such as his 2-tracks (tape, DAT and CD-R recorder), headphone amplifier and effects processors.

As we know, balanced connection is essential for vulnerable low level signals travelling more than a few meters, such as those coming from microphones, record players or DI boxes, and AES digital signals, but what are the advantages for devices sending louder line level signals such as outboard effects, EQ and dynamic processors?

If the leads are relatively short (less than 5 meters) then for these devices the only real benefits are peace of mind, and a louder signal (+4dB as opposed to the -10dB of unbalanced lines), because RF interference, although a possibility, is unlikely.

The truth though is that you can never be sure that an unbalanced connection will be problem free, especially if cables run close to other cables and studio devices, and troubleshooting and sorting out problems can cost more than the extra expense of installing all balanced leads. For a studio designer, and project studio owners, its simply easier to use all balanced cable and leave a core unconnected (or combine ground and negative) when necessary.

For project studio owners the extra expense may not be great because the cabling is usually short. Our customer eventual decided the risk wasn’t worthwhile and stuck with the original designers vision.

What do you think?

Thanks for reading

FairFax