Sound Advice: Living a Balanced Life (page 2)
Balanced Ends
Using balanced audio is a bit more trouble and includes some added expense, but the benefits are instantaneous and easily recognizable. You'll gain the ability to run long mike cables and the only noise in your recorded audio will be the birds singing in the trees. This gives you more flexibility during the shoot and less hassle during your edit session. Aside from better hours and more pay, what else could you want?
Sidebar: Balanced Audio - A Visual Description
Balanced audio can be difficult to understand. So here's a graphical representation of how noise gets cancelled in a balanced cable. Start your favorite photo-editing program and open a picture with some detail. Change it to grayscale, then duplicate the image on another layer. Invert the colors of the copy - now you have a negative of the original image. Adjust the opacity of the inverted layer to 50%. The images completely cancel each other and you'll be left with a solid gray picture. That's exactly what happens to unwanted interference and noise when they attempt to invade a balanced audio conne…
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