TOPIC:

Is it possible to use one (stereo) minidsp board as balanced, thus removing the 2 rca's on the input and replace them with one balanced in? The same for the outputs, thus replacing 4 rca's with two balanced outputs. I would like to put a board in each speaker and use xlr innterconnects to the speakers.

regards

I'm sure you know that it's more than just the replacement of connectors. It requires the addition of circuitry to convert the balanced input.

Hello,

Following your question, I'm not sure of your technical understanding of the difference between balanced and unbalanced stages, but you might want to do a bit of reading on that matter. Balanced inputs are appreciated for their great common mode noise rejection ratio (CMRR), i.e. removing the common mode noise (on both + and -) that may be introduced on long audio cable length.

Your idea of using 1 input for the positive, 1 input for the negative would not work since you would be missing a differential amplifier at the input to get rid of the common mode. However, with little modification to the board and some additional circuity (as suggested by cfelliot), you'll be able to achieve both configuration easily .If you don't know much about electronics, using the transformer path might be the easiest way for you.

Have a look at some application notes, like the one from Jensen XFMR. They are one the leaders when it comes to quality audio transformers(bal to unbal -> unbal to bal)

Hope this helps,

Hello HvA,

First of all, what is your goal with using a balanced connection. Do you have problems with hum or inference? If not, it is not much point in adding extra electronics to the signal path.

As the previous posters mentioned, it is not as easy as using two connections for one balanced connection. Rod Elliot has a very useful article on how to make a balanced line driver and receiver:
Article

Good luck with your project!

/Mattias

As Rundberg posted Rod Elliot is a goldmine of information on audio circuits.

I tried to follow his link, but it appears broken so I am re-posting here his info on balanced/unbalanced:

sound.westhost.com/articles/balanced-2.htm

Sorry for that, the copy-pasting action was too much for me and I got a double set of http:// in my link

The link is now fixed...