darTZeel NHB-108 model one User Manual

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darTZeel NHB-108 model one User Manual Manual pdf 27 page image

darTZeel NHB-108 model one User Manual, version B 1.0 Page 27 of 35The medium can also be steel. The hammer hittingthe string, in a piano, generates a pulse which cre-ates a propagating wave in the string, making itvibrate. Then this vibration will be eventuallytransmitted into the air.Air: this is the ultimate medium where man-mademusic propagates. Music is spread in wave form,the latter being described by a physical law, called"wave propagation theory". We will not enter intothe details, but mention just one crucial and essen-tial point:Acoustical waves do not move air.When we read in some high-end magazine that suchand such a flagship loudspeaker can blow out acandle while reproducing a trumpet or a saxophone,this is just metaphorical.The sound is produced by the vibration of air mole-cules, step by step. Yes, you did read correctly. It isvibration, not movement.If you know a friend who plays trumpet or saxo-phone, just put your hand on the bell and you willonly feel vibration, not a single tiny puff of wind.By the way, you would never think about a pianobeing able to stir up air to produce wind, wouldyou?These vibrations have a purely single-ended behav-ior, since they are produced around a point of equi-librium, where vibrations are zero.To cut a long story short, we can say that the wholeacoustical chain is single-ended. The only momentwhen the acoustical signal could be balanced iswhen it travels into the electric wires. In the air,sound is unbalanced, asymmetric, single-ended, asyou prefer.Why then, this obsession to balance a naturallyunbalanced signal? Is it not against nature?Furthermore, where is the real advantage in runningthe loudspeaker in balanced mode? To our knowl-edge, there is no balanced crossover in the market!Has any manufacturer already told you that there isno such thing? Okay, now you’ve been told.T5.4.4. Via the darTZeelIn the version B of the darTZeel NHB-108 modelone, we have also installed balanced inputs. Did wedo this just in order to be “with it”?First, we want to stress that we use floating bal-anced inputs. This means that rather than doublingthe whole electronics, as seen above, we use highquality input transformers. Of course the use oftransformers is much more expensive, but the re-sulting performances are far superior.Speaking of external disturbance immunity, trans-formers are much better than full active balancedtopology. The common mode rejection (this is thename given to that kind of immunity) can be – waitfor it – no less than five thousand times better whenusing transformers instead of full balanced circuits.Another, unbeatable, advantage is that they offertrue electrical isolation – called galvanic isolation –between the line and the gear, providing out-standing safety in professional use. Last but notleast is the fact that all the above-mentioned quali-ties are defined at the building stage, meaning thatperformances will not decrease over the years oreven decades to come. This is not by any means thecase in full active balanced versions.In conclusion, we cannot resist insisting on the factthat a full active balanced solution utilizes twice thenumber of components, implying a more complexsignal path, less reliability, and furthermore, espe-cially in power amplifiers, an output impedancetwice as high as with single-ended topology, andrequires a higher output stage NFB to compensate.Now that you have read these simple but demon-strative explanations, do the words "full active bal-anced" still mean "absolute superior sound" foryou?All this explains our choice for using, as a matter ofcourse, transformers of the highest quality for ourXLR inputs in the version B.We said above that by very nature, music is part ofa single-end world. More than 100 years ago, de-signers chose floating balanced lines – full balancedwas not ready yet – for long distance links for thesole purpose of minimizing external disturbances.Electric signals were therefore transmitted in a bal-anced way, the equipment working in single-endedmode.The NHB-108 model one version B offers thisvery same possibility to professional users wantingto link their remote consoles to the NHB-108 modelone, without having to use poor quality Balun-DIdevices.Despite what all our esteemed competitors mightthink, we nevertheless assert and corroborate thatthe one and only means of processing, amplifyingand broadcasting a musical signal without alteringit, even in the slightest, is simply to use the single-ended mode.But only in a special way, though…With short cables, say less than 10 meters, symmet-rical - balanced - transmission does not have anyjustification but marketing. A given gear "singing"better in balanced mode only reveals poor design insome part of the circuit, which can be partiallymasked by internal disturbance cancellation.