Aka Jack Nicholson

Thank you for your kind words!!

I am also a licensed commercial pilot. I know all about currency and recertification. :)

@@ScottsSynthStuff Oh, then next time you are going to be near Aruba.....

@@ScottsSynthStuff Ha! funny, I was watching this and thinking to myself you remind me of my dad in the way your mind works.. he was also a commercial pilot and flew 747 Jumbos for a living as a flight engineer :)

Here's the basic concept. Balanced and single ended operation are not compatible. Balanced has 2 hots ++ and a ground -, and single ended operation just has one of each. When you connect a balanced and SE component, something has to be done with the extra signal. You can either make the connection balanced on both ends, or single ended on both ends. That's where a DI box comes in. You plug a single ended connection into it, and it converts the signal to balanced. It makes everything compatible on both ends. I think where some of the confusion comes into play is most people focus on the cable. Cables are not balanced. Any 3 conductor cable can carry a balanced signal. The 2 components that you are connecting determines if the connection is balanced, not the cable. Overall this was a great video, but there were a couple of things I don't agree with, and its related to DI boxes. If you notice towards the end, he talks about mixing Bal and SE connections. He goes into somewhat of a grey area in that he may need to modify the cable by cutting the ground to make it work, or something similar. The reason this only works sometimes is because there are several ways to wire a balanced connection. Problems can be unique to one way, and not the other. In the video he showed that it's common practice to combine one of the signal conductors with the ground. Doing that can create a short circuit when power runs through the cable. You're combining a + and -. Not only will you hear the problem as noise, in some cases damage may occur. If you don't want any headaches, just use a DI box for all your mixed connections. If you want more detailed information, do a search for rane balanced vs single ended. The results will lead you to a paper by Rane. They go over all of the details, and show wiring diagrams for all the different types of balanced connections.

Generally speaking, any "stereo" cable is a consumer-grade unbalanced cable. Most professional audio is all mono, and you can run two mono lines to give you both a left and a right. Just because you see three conductors on the plug end, don't think "stereo" - think "balanced." I have never seen a balanced "stereo" connector, or heard of one. As for the noisy synths with USB cables - I covered that in this video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ZrmGmtCH1NHVYZ8.html

I use them in my studio, both for audio and MIDI. Internally, they are just a bunch of individual audio cables jammed together with a big outer skin. The inner audio cables are thinner because they don't need the thick, tough outer skin, so many more fit inside. But technically, they are identical to running a bunch of separate cables - except you don't end up with a rat's nest of cable spaghetti at the end of the night!

It definitely can. There can be ground potential differences, or especially (on double-insulated devices) voltage potential differences on the neutral line. Depending on how the individual devices are built, this can inject noise directly into your audio chain. To defeat this, I use power strips like this one to make sure everything is running on a single circuit: amzn.to/421BCTl

I've had that happen before when a cable was just not made quite to spec - or sometimes the housing of the cable prevented it from going in all the way.

I already did: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iZuTf8Snx8zahqc.html

@@ScottsSynthStuff cool! Thanks!

Many mixers, such as my X32, can adjust the gain to work with microphone or line level signals on the XLR input.

100%, and in fact the red cable you see me showing in the video is one of my patch cables. If you don't use a three-conductor patch cable in your patch bay, you're eliminating all the benefits of using balanced connections everywhere else in the signal chain. For balanced connections to work, they should be balanced from end to end.

Behringer X32, and absolutely love it. It took a bit of work to learn, and I'm only using a fraction of its capability, but it's an extremely economical way to get a 32-input audio interface.

A TRS cable means three conductors - tip, ring, sleeve. The same cable can be used for a balanced connection, or an unbalanced stereo connection.

@@ScottsSynthStuff thank you so much. That's what I thought but I started to doubt ... It's confusing how retailers describe them and surprisingly difficult to find a clear "this cable is good for both" description. Maybe it's one of those things everyone thinks everyone knows already.

No. Regulators do not affect the ground potential, and differences in ground potential is virtually always the cause of ground loops.

No, for stereo you still need two separate cables, one for each channel.

Perfectly fine. ALL of my cables are TRS, for both the balanced and unbalanced synths.

@@ScottsSynthStuff Sweet, cheers 🍻

I've been using Seismic Audio cables amzn.to/3LJtEq6 for years now. All of the XLR and MIDI snakes I used in my studio are Seismic Audio. They are inexpensive, and I have never had one fail. That said, if I was going to buy cables for live use, I'd probably buy something with a more robust strain relief and tougher jacket. But for studio use, where they usually get plugged in and left untouched for months, they work great.

@@ScottsSynthStuff Thanks for the input. Will be taking a look at these. :)

No disadvantage to balanced, as they are reverse-compatible to unbalanced (you can plug an unbalanced cable into a balanced plug and it will work fine). No idea why Nord, being a high-end brand, insists on still having only unbalanced connections. However, the MODX also has unbalanced outputs - you have to upgrade to the Montage to get balanced out.

Most digital synths since the 80s like the DX-7, Korg M1 and most other flagships for many years did not have balanced outputs. It's a newer trend that, if your willing to pay double for your modern synth, you can get balanced outputs. Some of the classic big analog synths had balanced outputs. It's no big deal at all, and a simple thing to correct. Nord doesn't bother, because it's no big deal, easy & cheap to correct. They have better things to worry about, and so should anyone worried about it. Don't believe those people that would make you think it was a "selling point" to have balanced outputs. Not unless the selling point is to save $30, $10 on needing an extra 1/4" patch cable, and maybe save 30 seconds hooking up an extra box/wire, or taking up the space of a deck of a cards. If that's all a big deal, pay the extra $1500 - $2000 to get your modern flagship with balanced outputs if available. Many people are still going to want to use a DI even if their keyboard offers balanced outputs. True selling point value of balanced outputs = $50 option.That's what it should be. Not $1500 - $2000. And if you happen to use other keyboards and run through a small mixer that has XLR output as many of us do, you don't even need a DI. Hope that clears it up for you.

You would first need the guitar to put out a balanced signal, which means it would have to have a preamp built into it. I haven't heard of such a thing, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'm sure someone, somewhere, at some time, has done it.

BTW, I know I can set the gain in the utilities menu on the MODX+, but oddly it will start clipping the signal, even though the volume is rather low.

Try using a DI box

@@eliefaradaykyungu1425 It's fine with the unbalanced ables.

I did not include + and - as "hot and ground" - they are indicating PHASE - the positive phase, and the negative (inverted) phase, which is what the two pins in a balanced connection contain.

@@ScottsSynthStuff Correct. You didn't say that. look at my comment again. "A balanced connection isn't hot, cold, ground." . Polarity is never referred to as hot and cold. And its not just me being picky. This is the most common mistake people make when trying to connect balanced and single ended gear. There are different ways a balanced connection can be wired. Quite often one of the signal wires gets combined with the ground/shield pin. Sometimes its OK to do it, but not always. When you call one of the signal conductors cold and label it with a -, you kind of make it look like a ground. In reality, its a signal wire, or a hot wire. Combine that with a real ground and you create a short circuit the second you plug the cable in. Most of the time it results in a noise, but it is possible to damage something. In my opinion, you're better off using a DI box. Its cheap, there's no reason make special cables and it keeps the signal balanced. If you already have a balanced signal, why not keep it that way? It almost eliminates any noise issues that arise from single ended connections, and you have the option to use long runs of cables, if needed. I'm guessing you haven't really looked into this issue for a while. The industry has taken balanced operation and turned it into a disaster. Not only how its implemented, but how its marketed. They're even playing games with headphones now.

Depends on who you ask - Direct Injection or Direct Input. Basically a box that allows you to pass audio from one device to another (i.e. synth to mixing desk) but without an actual, physical electrical connection. The audio is passed through a transformer, and this prevents ground loops from causing hum. It also changes impedance for connections that require it.

I talk about that specifically starting at 10:58 in the video

@@ScottsSynthStuff my apologies, I must have missed it

I think people get the more expensive Montage for the additional enhancements in sound features. Balanced outputs is a nice bonus.

Can you recommend a DI box for my modx?

@@springkordz I have a pair of stereo DI and mono DI boxes from Radial - PRO-D2. They are a bit expensive, these have a -15 db pad and ground lift switches that I use in a live setting.

True, but there's one other issue: there is not a DI box in existence that doesn't alter the signal passing through it. It's the nature of analog electronics. Passive DI boxes especially roll off the top end of the signal. There are very cheap and simple passive DI boxes, you can get them for under $30: amzn.to/3Y4s4TR I have had both the Montage and MODX, and have a Montage now. The MODX actually suffers GREATLY from ground loop noise when it is used with USB and a DAW, and I had to use a DI box on it. When I sold the MODX and replaced it with the Montage - no more DI box required. To my ears, the Montage sounds better than the MODX as well, which I suppose makes sense as it has much higher end D/A and analog output circuitry. That said, I did not buy my Montage for its balanced outputs.

I've used these - they are cheap, and sound pretty decent: amzn.to/3Y4s4TR

Exactly...

Turns out it's a cable fetish? :)

@@ScottsSynthStuff No, I'm not a masochist. Making all these instruments work together has kept me up at night sometimes. Thanks for the video, Scott. It answered some questions.