Sending Audio over Long Distances Many of our present audio practices and terminology come down to us from the original techniques, used 80 or more years ago by the phone company, to get audio successtully to the other end of a long wire. As an approximation, consider a wire “long” if it’s several miles in length. To start with, we know that to have a complete circuit there must be a path (conductor) from the source to the load, and another to return from load to source. In other words: a pair of wires (Note that since audio is AC, current can be flowing either way over the pair of wires, as the arrows show.) Source Wie? <> When current flows through a conductor, there will be a magnetic field around the conductor whose strength depends on the strength of the current... which of course, with AC, changes all the time. This changing magnetic field causes a small amount of stray inductance to exist in each of the wires above. You could measure a tiny amount of inductance per unit of length, for example per foot, of the wire, Since the wo wires of an audio circuit are always kept close to each other inside a cable, a charge (plus or minus) on one of the wires will attract or repel electrons on the other, nearby wire This results in a small stray capacitance between the two wires. Again, you could measure a small capacitance for each foot of the cable. If the cable is short, there will not be enough total inductance or capacitance to have any measurable effect on audio (20,000 Hz and below). So we can ignore the whole thing, except for the resistance of the wire, which again for a short cable will not amount to much, When you are trying to send audio over a much longer cable, the stray inductance and capacitance in each foot add up to enough to have an important effect on an audio signal Since stray inductance acts in series with the load and stray capacitance acts in parallel, we can't just assume they act like a large total inductor and a large total capacitor. Instead, we have to draw it like this, with small amounts of inductance and capacitance distributed evenly over the length of the wire: CAD--693--255-enp ea re Sours Load ere Lars leps, AR Each little piece of inductance delays changes in current very slightly, and then the next tiny amount of capacitance takes time to charge or discharge to a new value of voltage, which in turn causes current to flow into the next piece of inductance, which delays again, ete. So the overall result is a cumulative delay. Also, it acts as a low pass filter. (This is true with short wires also, but the delay and low-pass effects would then be so small as to be negligible.)So, for each short length of a Jong wire, the inductance in series charges the capacitance in parallel. Even if we disconnect the load, current will flow from the AC source down through all the distributed inductances and capacitances in the cable. If the wire is long enough, the load resistance may be so far down the line that just about the same current will flow into the line at the source whether or not the load is connected. This will happen when the line length is longer than a wavelength of the audio frequency being transmitted (wavelength = speed of transmission divided by frequency.) Assuming then that we have an immensely long wire, we'll get a current flow at the source end that is more or less independent of the load. How much current? The early phone company researchers found that for the kind of wire and cables they were using, the ratio of AC volt to current in a long line was about 600 across the range of audio frequencies they were interested in transmitting 300 to 3000 Hz.) In other words... THE “CHARACTERISTIC IMPEDANCE” OF A LONG TELEPHONE LINE IS ABOUT 600 OHMS, because about 1/600 amp flows from the source for each volt applied to the line, independent of the load. The longer the line, the closer Z approaches 600. ‘There's just one complication. Since the long wire behaves as a delay. the speed of propagation of an AC Signal is much less than it would be if we didn't have all the stray inductance and capacitance, Now, consider the speed of sound. In air, it's different from it would be in a solid object, such as a wall. When sound hits a wall, this speed change is what makes some of the sound energy reflect and some get absorbed into the wall. Electrically, the same thing happens in a long wire. At either the source or the load end of the wire, there are suddenly no more stray inductors or capacitors to slow down the signal. So, some energy is absorbed, and some is reflected back down the wire. This we don’t want, because you would hear these reflections boinging back and forth, like sound in @ live room. You would also get “standing waves” as you do in a room, which reinforce some frequencies and partly cancel others So, the telephone company engineers came up with a solution: to make the line look infinitely long. How? By adding a dummy line to each end, so it looks like the line continues on, What's this dummy line made of? Well, that’s easy... it's simply 2 RESISTANCE EQUAL TO THE CHARACTERISTIC IMPEDANCE OF THE LINE, which (for telephone line, or audio wire in general) is 600 ohms. This tricks the audio signal so that al] of it goes into the 600 ohm resistance as though it’s a continuation of the line. No reflections or standing waves occur. So to use a long line to transmit audio, we must set it up like this: Long Line (impedance approaches 600 ohms as length increases) The internal impedance of the source (output), and the impedance of the load, must both match (be equal to) the characteristeric impedance of the line. For general telephone and audio wie, this will be about 600 ohms. Of course, tor short lines, this isn't important; we can match or not. (Another example: video cable, which must transmit frequencies from 30 Hz to about 4.5 MHz, is constructed differently, with one conductor inside the other. This results in a characteristic impedance of 75 ohms, rather than 600. And with this range of frequencies, a cable six feet long is a Tong line. So, video equipment must always have a source and load impedance of 75 ohms.)‘To summarize: If we are going to send audio over a long line, we must feed the line with a source whose internal resistance is 600 ohms. Also, we must terminate the other end of the line with a load resistance of 600 ohms. The line's own impedance is thus matched at both ends, preventing reflections, If we are using short lines, matching the impedance of source of load to the line isn’t important. Of course, the phone company has always assumed that long lines are going to be used, and so the impedance of telephones themselves (which act as both source and load, since transmission is bidirectional) was, and still is. 600 ohms. Before transistors were invented, all audio equipment used tubes as amplifiers. A typical output impedance for a tube is somewhere between 5000 - 10.000 ohms. Input impedances are much higher, up to several million ohms. So, the output or input of a tube amplifier can't be connected directly to a telephone line. In fact, if you try to nun a 10,000 ohm circuit more than a few feet, stray capacitance in the cable will attenuate a lot of the high frequencies. So, even for short line transmission, it’s necessary to bring down the output impedance of a tube amplifier to something that will travel more than a few feet Without losing highs. Because of the phone company's long audio experience, and because early audio systems for broadcast use were often connected to actual phone lines, audio engineers decided to follow the telephone practice of using 600 ohm source impedance and 600 ohm load impedance, regurdless of line length, To make the high impedance tubes work at 600 ohms, matching transformers were used at each output and each input: ouTPur, = TUBE ‘TuBE} 10.000: 600 Ohm Line Ohms Foog2:t 1129) As long as the transformers have the correct turns ratio, this looks exactly like a 600 ohm source matched to a 600 ohm line, in tum matched to a 600 ohm load. In other words, like this: Source Z 600 Ohms | 600 Ohm Line Sours Studio equipment using tube amplifiers was always interconnected like this, so that it would work for any line length. Once a system has been set up this way, it’s still necessary, even when using short lines, for source and load impedances to be matched to each other. IE this isn’t obvious, let's assume that the “source” is the output of one track of a tape machine, and the “load” is an input of a console. The tape machine will have a VU meter connected at its output, to show the level being played back from tape:Tape Machine Oo Let's also assume that the VU meter's internal impedance is high, so that it draws negligible current from the source, as any voltmeter should. (Althot source and load Z are matched, the meter does not disturb the match. It's said to be bridged across the line. A bridging input, therefore, is one that draws negligible current.) Console Load Z 600 Ohms Short Line If the tape is playing back a tone that was recorded at 0 VU, the meter should read 0 VU. Let's say it does, when connected as shown above. ‘What happens to the VU reading if we disconnect the input to the console, like this? Tape Machine Source Z {600 Ohms Short Line DISCONNECTED What happens to the VU reading if we connect to two inputs, like this? > ene Machine | | Sconsole Source | | Stoaz 1600 Ohms |v |} Sieg Lins | 600 Ohms sooty | | > | acres Does this mean that the level on tape has changed? co Signal Processor Load Z 600 Ohms What can we conclude about how many loads (inputs) can be connected to each source (output), when impedances are matched? Suppose we know that all the audio lines in a studio are going to be short (less than 1000 feet) so that we never have to be concerned about matching line impedance. Is it necessary to match source and load impedances anyway? If we want to avoid restrictions (as above) on how many loads can be connected to a source, what values could be used for source and load impedances? While tube amplifiers are inherently high-Z devices, transistors have very low intemal source impedance. Do you see how this might work to our advantage?ital Audio and Video Impedance Considerations Remember that using source-and-load matched, 600 ohm transmission lines for analog audio isn't necessary unless the lines are very Jong, approaching 1/4 wavelength at the highest audio frequency we intend to send over the lines. So, today's analog audio wiring and patching schemes have to concer ourselves wi 2 ces. are greatly HOWEVER... Video signals contain frequencies up to 4 mHz. Digital audio signals (AES-EBU or S/PDIF) consist of square pulses at an approximate frequency of (sampling rate) times (number of bits per sample) times (number of channels, usually 2.) In other words, fundamentals greater than 1.5 MHz exist, plus error control and ID data, depending on the format. To maintain squareness of the pulses, odd harmonics (up to the eleventh or so) must also be transmitted with negligible phase shift. You can see that for frequencies like these, any wire is a long wire. So, the “characteristic impedance” of the wire used for such signals MUST BE MATCHED AT BOTH ENDS, just like analog audio over a phone line. And again, ONE OUTPUT can only connect to ONE MATCHED INPUT... no more. Both video and S/PDIF signals are transmitted using coaxial cable, which is supposed to have a characteristic impedance of 75 ohms. Monitor The internal source impedance of a VCR, or camera, or whatever video source, is always designed to be 75 ohms. The load impedance of the monitor input is also 75 ohms. If we use 75 ohm cable like we're supposed to, everything is matched (both ends of the 75 ohm cable being ferminated” with 75 ohms) and there will be no loss of high frequencies (which would cause the picture to smear) of reflections in the cable (which would result in double images.) If we need to use two monitors, some VCR's have two outputs. If not, we can add another monitor which has a high impedance (also called bridging) input. Some monitors are switch- selectable for 75 ohm or high impedance input, some select automatically between the two (don't ask how) and some are always 75 ohm. SSS hot outpur Hi Z input (paralllled_to other monitor] o_o (Hiz selected by switch - (automatically) NOTE! ‘There must be 75 ohm termination ONLY AT THE ENDS of the line. 75 onmrmpat