PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hello,

I am going to buy another Pulsar 2 card and take advantage of this "loyalty offer."
I hope this doesn't qualify as a stupid question, but what is the difference between Balanced and Unbalanced I/O s please.

Excuse my ignorance. I know it is a basic question, but one I don't know the answer to.

Thanks In advance for your response(s)

Unbalanced = signal and ground.
Balanced = 2 x signal (out of phase with each other to reject noise) and ground.

Balanced is commonly used for it's ability to reject noise over long cable lengths and noisy environments.

Un-balanced cables kept as short as possible and carefully run (i.e. away from and not parallel to A.C. power cables) are perfectly adequate.

Balanced is normally at pro audio +4db line level whereas Un-balanced is normally at consumer -10db line level.

In my case I have the unbalanced version of pulsar simply because I only use the onboard audio inputs/outputs for monitoring. All audio comes in via adat from an external mixer which is balanced and at +4db.

Go here for good info:-
http://www.rane.com/note110.html

And here for more topics.
http://www.rane.com/library.html

Why not get balanced option if you have the choice. You can always go from balanced to unbalanced later in the soundchain if you choose to...

Why don't get balanced and if you have any trouble when using unbalanced hardware, connect unbalanced to your old Pulsar card?

So you have all possibilities and nothing to care about

ciao,
Fede