Balanced To Unbalanced Cable Wiring

If you re wiring to a stereo jack use two balanced cables not one.

Balanced to unbalanced cable wiring.

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. In truth the main advantage an unbalanced cable has over a balanced cable is the cost. Unbalanced positive wire shielding. The structure of a balanced audio cable is similar to an unbalanced cable with one addition.

Balanced cables have a bit more inside. 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. 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. After removing the outer plastic layer you might encounter one of two things.

The diagram above shows how the cable works. Unbalanced cables depending on their quality might be anywhere from 30 60 of the cost of their balanced counterparts. The added safety of the balanced cable comes at a cost and even after you make the purchase you still need to pair your cables with. At the unbalanced end always connect the hot wire to the output or input pin and the cold wire to the ground pin.

Today we ll temporarily conclude our thread on cable wiring with suggestions on how to wire balanced outputs into unbalanced inputs.