Do I need to replace 48 cables? (Patchbay gain reduction - Balanced vs Unbalanced)

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

Hello!

Hoping for some advice. I am on a mission to have all my gear routed into a TRS patch bay (ART-48) and into my UFX III. 90% of my cables are unbalanced.

I have a gain reduction issue when I route in and out of the patchbay. For example, out of an Analog Rytm > PB > Analog Heat > PB > UFX, I loose around 11 DB.

I have tried going through the patchbay using TRS cables and I did not have a volume issue with the AR.

Do I need to replace all my cables? Is it just a gain thing that I can make up in Ableton, or should I be using TRS throughout? I also had a couple of polarity issues where I would assume the cable is shorting.

Thanks for any help on this, would appreciate any advice.

#2

Thereā€™s no volume differential between the Elektron gear whether using TS or TRS fwiw

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#3

Not sure about your exact situation, but Iā€™d always use balanced cables if your ins and outs support it, for less noise.

Might be worth gradually replacing them all over time!

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#4

The unbalanced cable is grounding half the output of the AR (the R in ā€˜TRSā€™ is being shorted to ground), so youā€™re only getting half the signal, hence the gain loss.

So yes, using TRS cables will ensure the signal being sent by the AR down both the tip and ring of the TRS cable will be received by the UFX.

So the solution is to either increase the gain on the UFX inputs to compensate for the reduced signal from a TS cable (which will theoretically increase the noise floor), or use TRS cables.

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#5

I donā€™t know about the ART-48, but I have been running several NYS-SPP-L1 patchbays for many years now, and I have always used TRS cables with them.
In a few instances (like with Moog Sirin, of all devices) I had to run TR cables into the patchbay, but then it is TRS all the way.
Unless gear output is specifically not compatible with balanced TRS connections, then you should always run TRS connections.
The more sources you are recording simultaneously in separate stems (or mix down) the more noise from cables will get in the mix. Balanced connections help with that.

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#6

Wow thanks for all the replies guys. I have found a supplier with a bulk deal that will cost me around 80 GBP to replace the various lengths to Balanced TRS. In the scheme of things its a small price to pay to make sure everything works.

As i mentioned, I ran a full balanced routing through my patchbay and it overclipped my UFX (so clearly works lo).

I would assume i need to get balanced patch cables too? :persevere: lol

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#7

Some of my stuff is pretty similar - unbalanced cables into ART-48 into UCX II. I didnā€™t see much point in balanced for the patchbay since everythingā€™s pretty close together and basically everything I have is unbalanced aside from the interface.

I donā€™t have everything fully set up to test at the moment but Iā€™ve patched through multiple things in chains before and havenā€™t noticed any large gain reductionā€¦ Certainly nothing like 11db!

This has given me a bit of fear about going and buying something with balanced outsā€¦ Ironically Iā€™ve been pondering splashing out on a RYTM as well!

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#8

Okay great. And TRS will work fine when plugged into source with something like a Minitaur? I read it is better to have the connection to unbalanced as close to the source

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#9

I think since you have a mish mash of gear (everybody does, lol) you might want to just take some TRS and TS cables over an afternoon and test everything individually. I did it, marked everything in my phoneā€™s notes app along with the RMS levels of everything without any signal going down and I think it saved some of my sanity in the end, along with a few $$ along the way. Get a p-touch and label it all too if you can so you know whatā€™s what.

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#10

Thanks, Iā€™ll get testing.

If my interface is TRS, my patchbay is TRS and a good amout of my gear is too, I would assume I will need to order a good amount of balanced cables regardless thoguh, right? What was your solution for hardware with unbalanced outs?

#11

It didnā€™t seem to matter mostly in my case - my problem wound up being ground noise and I fixed that by running everything through the same outlet pair and power conditioner. A cable snake(s), if practical, would cost a bit less than individual cables and might help.

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#12

This isnā€™t how it works with Elektron devices which are not fully balanced, but impedance balanced. The devices already (by design) ground the ring as part of the cheaper (but doubly compatible) impedance balanced outs. They are not fully differential with a plus and minus signal on tip and ring, the ring is only inverting the ground noise, so it has some benefit. But it makes no difference to the potential output levels from Elektron devices as they generate the same signal level whether received at unbalanced or balanced devices (because the balanced device only sees signal on tip, the same as the unbalanced device)

Not for the benefit of output level from the Elektron devices, you will only get a small benefit in terms of noise (the ring noise is inverted) if the cables are long and poorly shielded or the working environment is noisy

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#13

so for example, there is no issue going:

AR mk2 > Unbalanced cable > TRS patchbay > unbalanced patch cable > TRS patchbay > unbalanced cable > Analog heat > unbalanced cable > TRS patchbay > unbalanced patch cable > TRS patchbay > unbalanced cable > RME UFX II

this would be all the components atm for an example patch to run through the analog heat and into my interface.

#14

I assume this only would count if i went from the AR to the heat though? As my patchbay would not have this benefit.

#15

A simple take home from this is that if the cables were short and well made/screened, the environment was ā€˜cleanā€™ then irrespective of what type of cable (TS/TRS) you used connecting any Elektron to anything else (whether it was ā€˜properlyā€™ balanced or not) it would make no difference in output levels or meaningful noise levels.

With lots of connections where devices are balanced ā€˜compatibleā€™ (including the Elektrons) then it would be a potential recipe for noise that even an impedance balanced (i.e noise rejection is facilitated on the ring which does not carry any sent signal at all from an Elektron) would start to help with, but as i said in the first reply, itā€™s nothing to do with signal level which was the thrust of your question.

Thereā€™s no harm (except to pocket) of using TRS cables where you can, but donā€™t tell yourself it will help a signal level issue, it might alleviate potential noise issues (at best)

There are a few more topics on this where more detail will be discussed. Itā€™s important to take note that Elektron devices donā€™t have ā€˜fullyā€™ balanced outputs, they have respectably hot outputs, but it is unbalanced and balanced compatible. So you donā€™t lose level as such, as a fully balanced signal may typically be in the same ballpark voltage-wise.

TS or TRS from Elektron into and out of your patchbay will be no different, it will still only have the healthy ā€˜hotā€™ sound signal on the tip, and inverted noise on the ring

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#16

Thanks for this response. What is causing the loss in db in exactly that routing example I shared? I had assumed it was an issue with the unbalanced cable shorting.

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#17

Appriciate you sharing your knowledge with me. Is it not better to replace all cables with balanced in this scenario still though? It seems to me like a <Ā£100 fix for an ongoing problem (even if some cable swaps will have negligible improvements).

#18

use whichever cables you want, itā€™ll be easier if they are all the same and you mitigate the potential for noise, nothing wrong with TRS except cost and your op references ā€œneedā€ ā€¦ iā€™m not sure whatā€™s causing the level drop you experience

but a way to prove what it isnā€™t is to use TS and TRS from one of your Elektrons and compare signal levels in a simple setup ā€¦ then add from there until you see a drop, then see whatā€™s going on within that device ā€¦ especially one which translates its signal into the digital domain

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#19

Yeah, I was gonna sayā€¦ This sounds like it needs more testing to try and isolate the issue. Just go from the AR into the patchbay and out into one other thing, if it sounds alright add one more device into the chain etc.

Hopefully a big drop occurs when adding something specific but if itā€™s more of a gradual cumulative drop, that might be the time to start worrying about replacing every connection. Iā€™d be surprised if the latter ended up as extreme as that though.

#20

Thanks. Regardless, I will need quite a lot of Balanced cables, so think im going to make my life easier and order a bunch to replace. At least I will have some cables to troubleshoot with lol

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