One question, as my first post here.
Does anybody know how the MR-1000's ( I know it is the MR-1 topic) XLR output is organized? Which is the purer: the RCA or XLR? I feel the XLR output is worse than the RCA, so is the internal structure is generally symmetrical and RCA output is generated by an opamp, or the XLR output is generated by an opamp from the internally asymmetrical construction?
Thanks for the help.
Balanced output (XLR) is usually best if running long cables for having best chance of external noise immunity, and better condition of signal for maybe cancelling the effects of wire inductance/capacitance after traveling more than a few meters extension cord distance.
For shorter cable runs, unbalanced output actually has chance of lower distortion characteristic than balanced (one less amplifier handling the output signal) and is preferred by some purists for this reason.
If the balanced output is handled by a transformer, then usually one amplifier is driving the output, and the characteristics of the output transformer has most effect on signal quality, and usually not as 'Hi-Fidelity' as direct connected unbalanced output.
For these reasons I
personally choose to design a special stereo preamplifier output using an older technique once used exclusively by an audiophile equipment company also doing live performance recording and having to run mic signals a hundred or more feet. They developed a special mic preamplifier located a few feet from the mics that drove unbalanced 50 or 75 ohm
load-terminated video cable.
The output in this case is much higher power (overrides by several orders of magnitude all lower power radio/AC power noise signals), the cable is also 100% shielded adding even more noise immunity, AND terminated in its characteristic impedance so there is
no chance of signal reflections (phase timing corruption) usual with all long lengths of signals traveling over unterminated cable, including commonly used unterminated balanced cable.
While it's easy to find 100% shielded, precision impedance video cable these days. The engineering design challenge with this is the audio performance of the
video output amplifier, and is not so easy to make as this one company realized, but eventually succeeded as did I using a special class A amplifier design developed over 20 years ago for this purpose.
This an older photo, now available with miniXLR connector upgrade
This allows EXACTLY the same quality LINE level signal outputted from the preamplifier to arrive at the terminated end
thousands of feet away unchanged or interfered with by noise; not even balanced or any other extension cable method can do this feat.
So best seems single amplifier output and ultimate is also driving unbalanced, but very low impedance terminated video/RF type cable.
While required by very few caring recordists working very long distance mic positions, those interested or just curious in knowing more about a very unique S-VHS video cable output preamp capable of driving over a thousand foot length of cable, and while running on ~20 hour life
internal battery power go to:
www.sonicstudios.com/access.htm#24njv