Ok but the cables are for connecting Elektron machines and there’s no powerchord next to them and I don’t have any bad power supplies… 
But I hear you and I wish I had known the importance of this and that these Hosa’s are so inexpensive, before I ordered the unbalanced ones. Anyway, I may change them at some time then.
I just thought that these might be the perfect ones since they are made by Elektron for their machines… Elektron should have made balanced ones then.
I wouldn’t worry much if it sounds fine don’t worry about it and/or use whatever you want
I appreciate learning about this even if it’s a bit disappointing too since I just ordered the Elektron ones.
But what about those Hosas that you link to, they are inexpensive and pretty thin. Are they properly shielded? Are they good enough then?
These look great too:
Cordial Cables with Neutrik Plug is a very good choice.
worth spending extra money on decent cables.neutrik connector on a van damme cable is decent. definitely worth the extra money in the long run
the cordial cables are not so expensive…you can get 3m with neutrik plug for 13 euro per cable. Thats not so bad
yeah there decent enough. neutrik connectors are good. mistake I 1st made was buying cheap cables like hosa. plastic moulded jacks soon break down
i made the same mistake when i started and bought some cheap patch kabel in a pack…you will defenitly notice a difference between them 
But for my Elektron Maschines i prefer to use the Elektron Cables cause the Plug is not so big and its a bit more flexible on the plug.
yeah I must have about 100 cables which are not very good. gonna start making my own as I just brought loads of neutrik connectors 
Due to the nature of a balanced signal transmission, there has to be none and mostly never is any shielding. The signal is once normal and once inverted in phase.
When you sum these, only the unwanted signal remains and is then subtraczed from the hot signal. That is a very clever way to have unwanted
Parts eliminated with minimal effort.
On instrument cables, there mostly is a shielding though. And it better is, because they are nothing but long high quality antennas - so do not usw intrument cables when your gear supports balanced connects.
Just to nerd out a bit more, elektron devices use ”impedance balancing”, not true differential balancing. In impedance balancing, you only get the signal in one leg, the other leg just catches the same stray ”signal pollution” as the wire carrying the actual signal, and this is then nulled at the output by flipping phase. This means that impedance balancing gives you improved CMRR (Common Mode Rejection Ratio?) but does not give a +6dB output level benefit like a true differential balanced connection would give.
So why everyone uses impedance balancing then? Usually there’s two reasons I can think of:
Managed to make 10 cables over the weekend, time consuming but technique getting faster. Unbalanced XLR/TS. Mixing and metal types to match equipment.
Going to focus on making balanced xlr/trs next weekend.
Interesting, how do you know if a device uses impedance or differential balancing, do you have to rely on documentation?
What happens if you connect two pieces of equipment of different balance types, does it not work and might as well use a unbalanced cable?
Good question. I do not actually know what happens in a situation like that.
You know your equipment is impedance balanced if you can use both balanced and unbalanced cables with it. If unbalanced cannot be used for a connect point, it usually means that its a true differentially balanced connector (most often has only an XLR socket).
I have a Soundcraft UI24R which has 10 combi inputs and 10 non combi inputs, perhaps it has impedance balances on the combis and differential on the other.
Having a look at the below article, second to last paragraph seems to suggest that a impedance balance system still works with a differential one.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advice/q-how-impedance-balancing-audio-different-normal-balancing
Got this interesting explanation from Elektron support today when I asked why they sell unbalanced cables for their instruments:
“Unbalanced instrument cables works fine with our impedance balanced outputs. There’s really no point in having the much more expensive balanced cables if you’re not gonna have them running really long or are in an environment with a lot of external interference. When the cord length is under three meters unbalanced cables actually have a stronger signal than balanced cables. This is because at this length, any distortion is unlikely, and the simplicity of unbalanced cables can work wonders when there’s no detriment coming from potential distortion. For instance, mastering studios typically use unbalanced cables ranging between one and three meters in length.”
I have my doubts about that reply tbh
They didn’t supply any academic links pointing out these supposed performance improvements?
Thought about it as well…
a balanced cable has no loss, unless maybe you go into the 10th of metres. And even there, the unbalanced woild have a significant amount of immision.
Has anything changed in physics since my degree? 
And all mastering engies I know have the shortest possible directly patched symmetrical/balanced cables as long as they stay in the analog domain. Not even a patchbay involved.
Some of Elektron’s reply is copy paste.
Yes I did notice actually
I do assume it still holds water…
Since there are so many different perceptions and opinions about this the true test probably should be ones own ears.
