2.3 Balanced and Unbalanced Audio and AC Power

After much skull scratching and soul searching, I decided to combine several concepts into one section, because they are so intimately interconnected. No, not that intimately, they’re just good friends.

So in this section I’ll talk about unbalanced and balanced audio, unbalanced and balanced AC power, and the best ways to wire and clean up the sound (and picture) of your studio/disco/home theater/whatever.

Unbalanced/Balanced Audio

Let’s start with audio; a nice, simple bit of audio – a sine wave. Some of you may have seen a sine wave on an oscilloscope or in a picture. They all look more or less like the one in Figure 2.3.1.

Figure 2.3.1  Basic sine wave.

Since the sine wave is AC ...

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