low impedance output to high impedance input
I know that the impedances should be matches so the input impedance of the device is around 10 times bigger than the output signal that goes to this input.
But is there a limit?
If I have a signal coming out of the device and its 1k ohm then I'd load it into something with impedance around 10k (line level). But what would happen if I loaded it into input that has around 1 milion ohms (instrument level)? Will the signal be attenuated so I can hear it because it's too weak? Where's the boundary that shouldn't be crossed? Or is there any?
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There’s a difference between matched impedances and bridged impedances. With matched impedance, they are matched. Meaning both output and input impedances would be about the same, like 8 Ohms for a speaker connection. Matched impedances provide the best power transfer.
Bridging impedances, where the input of the next stage is about ten times or more than the output impedances, provide the best voltage transfer. They also generally support longer distances.
I think one limitation on the input impedance is the next stage is that after the signal gets past the input, you have something you want to do with it, and you don’t want to have to change the impedance overly much before wharvwe processing you want to do.
Also, the greater the difference in impedance, the lower the power transfer, so at some point you really start to weaken the overall signal level. And higher value resistors are more expensive.
High impedance inputs tend to be also comparatively high voltage inputs. That's what makes them reasonably noise tolerant. Feeding them with low level signals will force you to crank up your gain with a resulting less than favorable signal/noise ratio. For that reason, using a DI for transforming a low level low impedance signal to a higher level (and, given a passive DI, higher impedance) signal may make quite a bit of sense. One typical use case would be for matching a dynamic microphone (balanced, low level, low impedance) to an instrument amp input (unbalanced, higher level, high impedance).
If a high impedance source is connected to a lower impedance input the signal will be attenuated, more so at the higher frequencies. When a low impedance source is connected to a higher impedance input the signal is weak, but not distorted. The best power transfer occurs when the impedance matches and the best voltage transfer occurs when the input is up to ten times high impedance than the source. The greater the difference in impedance the more the signal will be affected.
I was a loudspeaker (cabinets and drivers) designer in the 1970s.
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