I don’t know why, but many cable company uses very misleading terms on the descriptioin of the RCA cable they are selling. First of all I would like to explain a little bit of different kinds of cable construction and then try to clear out the smoke around the term “balanced.”
The number one term is the word “balanced”. many cable call their twisted pair construction RCA wires “balanced construction” or “balanced design.” But all it is, it’s just a fancy way to call the twisted construction.
Basically you just need to know that there are 2 different way of making RCA cable. One is coaxial, and the other one is twisted pair. On a very low end cable, they are made out of thinner coaxial wires. Because they use very thin copper wire in the center, and the outer shielding layer is very loosely covered, it doesn’t have very good sound quality & noise rejection performance.
One level up is the twisted pair type. this is actually a very cost effective way to shield out the noise from coming into the cable. and because it’s very easy to make, just use two same gauge wire and twist it together. Many manufacture sells this cable as their higher end cables. But twisted cable has one trade off. when the cable are twisted together, it created a higher capacitance inside the cable. Therefore, the high frequency part will be attenuated and portion of the signal will be lost.
Theoretically speaking, coaxial cable can have better performance when the shielding material is adequate and the capacitance is kept low. that’s why on higher end home audio RCA cable, you would only see coaxial construction.
Balanced cable in the audio world is actually referred to another kind of cable typically used in professional audio equipments. Basically there are two kind of connection method when connecting the signal from head unit to amplifier, they are single ended design and balanced or differential design. It used to be that balanced design offer better sound quality than single ended design, but not anymore. However, the industry would still like to use “balanced” term to fool customer that it’s a better cable. Just keep one thing in mind, only the head unit and amplifier that is a “balanced” design can use a real balanced cable. You can’t use balanced cable on single ended design amps and decks. Right now, 99.9% of car audio decks and amp that are made is single ended design. So next time you see a twisted pair cable stating it’s a balanced cable, don’t be fooled by it.
In car audio world, from my opinion, the cable doesn’t make as big of impact on sound quality when compared to speakers, amps and decks. so when buying cable, make sure you get a little bit better than basic models to ensure a more secure and reliable connection, but don’t go over board and buy some $100 cable. It wouldn’t do you justice on the extra money you spend.
