What is unbalanced?
To complete any type of circuits, including audio circuits, you must have two wires (or signal paths). Signals flow from one piece of equipment to another via these two wires. Unbalanced is utilizing one active wire and one ground/shield wire return for a single audio feed. The audio is impressed on the one active or hot wire. Nearly all audio inputs require the active wire to be shielded. That is, the ground is braided or spirally wound around the active (hot) wire. The following picture shows electrically, how unbalanced audio is passed from one piece of equipment to another: As you can see, the audio output of Stage 1 is passed to the input of Stage 2 with the ground/shield as the return path. The term “return path” is commonly used to denote the completion of the circuit. You must complete a circuit in order for a circuit to function properly. Removing the ground will cause all kinds of hum and noise to be heard with almost no reproduction of the audio source. In reality, the groun
