Benefits of hi Z unbalanced shielded twisted pair fact or fiction?

[alby]

There is an advantage to using a balanced cable with unbalanced connectors (Only short the ground to negative on one end). Sometimes this approach works very well when you have ground loop that the lift on a DI and power lifts just won't alleviate. Typically the Tip and Ring (Pin 2 and 3 of XLR) are carried down a twisted pair in a quality balanced cable. This, in and of itself, will reduce noise although not to the extent a real balanced connection will but will give you considerably more distance than a typical Hi Z cable. Planet waves instrument (unbalanced) cables are like this...The core is a twisted pair. Check with Bell Labs for noise reduction results over various twisted pair cores in correspondence with single core brethren. Noise floor can be reduced by 4.5 dB in a 20' run I think.. The guys name is Claude Shannon. And he determined this in 1948 when the phone system was still analog. You can run an unbalanced signal a very long way.

Yes / no?

[agedhorse]

There are some possible shielding benefits, and this was important when a good transformer was indeed expensive. There won't be any improvements on ground loops though, as you still need a ground connection between devices.

 

Now, it's just as cheap to impliment active balanced line drivers and receivers.

[alby]

Even in a 20 foot guitar cable: Guitar to Amp? I guess you could transformer the guitar passive end? Active balanced line drivers and receivers on both ends?