Unbalanced
From WikiRecording
A balanced connection (for instance an XLR cable) is one that uses 3 wires rather than an unbalanced 2. A normal unbalanced cable (for instance a guitar cable) gets interference rather easily, it consists of the signal being sent, and a grounded return but a balanced cable consists of 2 cables sending the signal but one has flipped phase before its sent out. the third is ground. because the 2 signals are flipped any interference that gets picked up should be roughly identical in each signal when the flipped phase gets flipped back and the signals summed the interference is canceled out. A balanced XLR can run for a few hundred feet before running into noise and interference problems compared to a unbalanced instrument cable that is as short as possible but probably shouldn't run more than 20-30ft and ideally should be as short as possible.
