OFFICIAL SITE RELEASE DATE: Christmas Day (December 25th)
General
Before we get started into the rest of the hullabaloo, we need to cover some basics
Signal Levels- In live sound (well in the whole audio world for that matter) there are basically 3 signal levels you will most commonly be dealing with: Microphone Level, Line Level, and Speaker Level.
Microphone signals are very quiet, they commonly are produced by (you guessed it!) microphones, and a received by Microphone pre-amplifiers, which bring them up to line level.
Line level is right in the middle. Most devices work with line level= signals at Microphone Level are brought up to line level at the microphone pre amplifier, devices work with the signal and eventually send it to the power amplifiers, which brings it to speaker level.
Lastly speaker level is intercepted by speakers, and generated by power amplifiers, which take Line Level and boost it to speaker level. As you may have guessed this signal is very powerful, since it caries enough power for the speaker to operate off of it.
Balanced and Unbalanced audio- When dealing with signals other than Speaker Level, they will fall into either Balanced(bal.) or Unbalanced(unbal.).
This usually depends on the type of cable you have, as most audio devices and work with both. Heres what's happening in a cable: In balanced cables there are commonly 3 cables in them, that then end up on the connectors at the end. In unbalanced cables, there are only 2. For a balanced signal to work, It need a positive signal (+sig) and a negative signal (-sig) and a ground to work, thats 3 separate cables for it to run, which balanced cables have. Unbalanced signals only need a cables for signal and ground.
Now that we understand that... is there another way we can use balanced cables? Yes! Since balanced cables have 2 signal cables, we can run 2 unbalanced signals though them (signal 1 gets 1 audio cable and signal 2 gets the other, they can share the ground). However this is not really used too often, since you want balanced signals as much as possible, it is usually used when you want to carry a stereo signal through 1 cable (since the Left side needs a signal and the R side needs a signal) and may look something like this:. The cable on the left is balanced (you can tell by the the three sections on it, it is caring the stereo signal) and the another two are the left and right signals of that stereo signal, they only have 2 sections on them because they are unbalanced. This configuration is also used as an insert cable, this is where audio is send and received through the same cable. It is send and received through the balanced end and each unbalanced end corresponds to the send (where the audio comes from) and the other corresponds to the receive, (where the audio gets sent after processing). We'll get into this later.
Signal Levels- In live sound (well in the whole audio world for that matter) there are basically 3 signal levels you will most commonly be dealing with: Microphone Level, Line Level, and Speaker Level.
Microphone signals are very quiet, they commonly are produced by (you guessed it!) microphones, and a received by Microphone pre-amplifiers, which bring them up to line level.
Line level is right in the middle. Most devices work with line level= signals at Microphone Level are brought up to line level at the microphone pre amplifier, devices work with the signal and eventually send it to the power amplifiers, which brings it to speaker level.
Lastly speaker level is intercepted by speakers, and generated by power amplifiers, which take Line Level and boost it to speaker level. As you may have guessed this signal is very powerful, since it caries enough power for the speaker to operate off of it.
Balanced and Unbalanced audio- When dealing with signals other than Speaker Level, they will fall into either Balanced(bal.) or Unbalanced(unbal.).
This usually depends on the type of cable you have, as most audio devices and work with both. Heres what's happening in a cable: In balanced cables there are commonly 3 cables in them, that then end up on the connectors at the end. In unbalanced cables, there are only 2. For a balanced signal to work, It need a positive signal (+sig) and a negative signal (-sig) and a ground to work, thats 3 separate cables for it to run, which balanced cables have. Unbalanced signals only need a cables for signal and ground.
Now that we understand that... is there another way we can use balanced cables? Yes! Since balanced cables have 2 signal cables, we can run 2 unbalanced signals though them (signal 1 gets 1 audio cable and signal 2 gets the other, they can share the ground). However this is not really used too often, since you want balanced signals as much as possible, it is usually used when you want to carry a stereo signal through 1 cable (since the Left side needs a signal and the R side needs a signal) and may look something like this:. The cable on the left is balanced (you can tell by the the three sections on it, it is caring the stereo signal) and the another two are the left and right signals of that stereo signal, they only have 2 sections on them because they are unbalanced. This configuration is also used as an insert cable, this is where audio is send and received through the same cable. It is send and received through the balanced end and each unbalanced end corresponds to the send (where the audio comes from) and the other corresponds to the receive, (where the audio gets sent after processing). We'll get into this later.