Back in Nov 2005 there was a thread comparing coax with balanced
feedlines.

At that time I held the viewpoint that coax was "better" then balanced
feedlines
for almost every receiving application.

In the last few months I have been experimenting with antennas other
then the
common "long" wire antenna fed to coax with a 9:1 transformer.

For balanced antennas like active dipoles, significant reduction in
noise engress
can be obtained with balanced over coax if a true balan is used at the
typical
unbalanced HF antenna input. I have noted significant reduction in
common mode,
requiring much less ferrite, with balanced versus coax.

For the "long" wire antenna with a 9:1 I have not found a suitable
wiring scheme
for balanced to work better then coax.

Care must be taken in constuction to insure as much physical symetry
in the active
dipole as well as the balun at the receiver end.

While I am not a fan of loops, I suspect that with proper attention to
construction
and wiring, loops to could benefit from balanced feedlines. Acitve
loops will require
great attention to the power/RF combiner to insure that no un-balance
is added.
From my limited experience, active loops are not a good choice for
balanced
for this reason.

In direct comparsions an actve dipole outperformed an ALA 1530 and a
WL1030.
So except for my ancient MaKay Dymek DA5, which I keep for sentimental
not
practical reasons, I have decided to not investigate loops any
further.

Single ended active antennas and other unbalanced antennas will, in
general,
be better with coax instead of balanced.

When the weather moderates I intend to compare some special "tightly
twisted"
audio cable with plain zip cord.

Terry