Xlr Cable Vs Rca

You might not get any benefit but you re very unlikely to suffer any detriment.

Xlr cable vs rca. I use rca for my hifi and home cinema but xlr for my recording studio and portable recording gear. Optimization of both cables includes. You will likely see more balanced cables with xlr connectors because they are generally more common for balanced audio for this very reason. A quarter inch trs cable is another balanced professional audio cable.

Longer quality runs of xlr are usually cheaper than their rca equivalent i m thinking vandamme vs something like audioquest and personally i prefer the connector on an xlr. It s also worth noting that having an rca connect at one end of the cable and an xlr on the other will unbalance the signal and render the whole thing moot. It s very easy to assume that if your equipment has both xlr and rca connections that xlr connections are going to be the better sounding connection. Rca has no such clasp.

This is also where the use case bifurcates. If you use now a balanced connector in place of an rca an xlr connector it will break that ground loop. As for the cable itself there is no reason why one cannot fabricate an xlr terminated balanced cable that performs just as good as a single ended rca terminated cable. Xlr passes balanced audio whereas rca passes unbalanced audio.

Balanced cable types xlr. As someone with more than a passing interest in audio engineering and production the balanced nature of the signal transfer with xlr is essential to avoid any kind of interference along the typically quite long cable. Balanced xlr vs unbalanced rca i suggest that you simply make a couple of cables connecting a 1 4 inch trs tip ring sleeve balanced plug to a male single ended rca plug making sure to connect the hot signal on the balanced 1 4 connector the tip to the hot pin on the rca plug. If you re not going through an unbalanced device like a minidsp 2x4 i d go balanced.

Xlr vs rca which is best. Xlr cables can send balanced audio signals up to 200 feet. So for things like subwoofers where you have a longer cable run and ground loops are very possible i always recommend xlr. Xlr connector also has a latch on it to lock the connection in place.

The connector on the xlr cable has three pins whereas the one on the rca cable only has one. Different physical connectors for starters. The hot pin carries the signal the cold pin also carries the signal but inverted think mirror image and the third carries the earth. Also rca connection is unbalanced meaning there s only one signal cable and one ground cable.

It s not always the case. Proper selection and treatment of the conductors geometry that minimizes capacitance per unit length and dielectrics that minimize.