As an aside it’s why talking about individual components is only a part of it.
Really it’s about the synergy between components.
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There’s just so many things to factor it’s hard to just jump to “balanced is better because one person said so”
Also I feel like I could also share some experience with the ether 2. I have only heard them exclusively on balanced amps so unfortunately I can’t give a ton of insight on running these single ended. I can say that they were fairly picky when it came to amps, and it really differed with each amp. It did change a fair amount depending on how the amp preformed. On one amp it sounded very mediocre, but on others it sounded really good. The way it was designed makes it pretty picky on what amp it likes.
I will say that my favorite amp with it under 1k was that iha 6. It just had alot of authority and was natural sounding that helped it really improve on most fronts compared to a 789
Well im not going off something one guy said in once instance. i’ve heard a lot of people say balanced matters with some headphones. also not just the Ether 2’s either. but ive always thought maybe its just placebo. Watch the Zeos video i posted. he tries them on a number of amps including a Emotiva Bass x 100 with jumpers removed.
I’m not gonna hear something and run off halfcocked. This is the culmination of things ive been hearing. Mon, you must have a lot of experience with this. do you think balanced matters?
Mon, you must have a lot of experience with this. do you think balanced matters?
He answered this in a reply earlier in this thread…
The case where you would want to prefer balanced all of the time would be with long cable runs. Running cables in environments with very high interference around them or in lengths in excess of 15 feet (imo)
I don’t have a problem with balanced. I prefer to use balanced cables when given the option. But the term is thrown around like it’s a magical cure to make things sound better, and that’s the issue I have with it. I just don’t think you can say balanced is better as a blanket statement. Just like everything else in this hobby, it’s conditional and subjective. There are amps where it makes a difference, and amps where it doesn’t but it almost always comes down to the way the amp is designed
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Except you will never use a 15-ft cable for headphones, so balanced interconnects and EM noise rejection are beside the point here.
“Balanced” on headphones is completely different, it’s about eliminating the common ground and getting better stereo performance. Can Someone Explain Balanced to me? - #6 by abm0
This is why IEMs are the first to benefit from it: they have such low impedance it’s close to the common-ground impedance of single-ended cables, which leads to high L-R crosstalk and a somewhat constricted stereo image. You switch that to balanced and you can easily hear a difference in the stereo separation.
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Well fine then take my answer for interconnects and say I was answering for headphones lol
That was answering something else once we were talking about a fully balanced system at that point. The initial posts here addressed the balanced headphone out
Ah, my mistake.
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So ive done this test. Twisted the cables up. Flip them and moved them enough to lose count. And covered it with a cloth. Using the Tin T2. The most sensitive IEM I own.
The balanced output of the sp200 does benefit from a seperated ground and measurably lower cross talk from the amplification circuit.
When I tested this. I thought I could hear differences. Better stereo separation. And i guessed right the first time. But subsequent guesses yielded mixed results. It ended being around 50/50…
Now these are just my personal test… but for me personally, I don’t believe there is a benefit to separating the ‘ground’ for perceivable audio quality. I am not convinced. I believe overall ‘power’ from a source would play a much larger roll in the ‘perceived’ sound quality of amplification, which is often the benefit of the balanced output on most balanced amps. And it perhaps makes a difference in an amp which has ‘dirtier’ amplification to begin with… which isn’t the case with the 3 main THX amps.
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Also, it typically makes a noticable difference on iems though, but with headphones it’s much less noticable. Yeah it’s kinda hard to tell at times. It really depends on the stuff you use to test
i heard that the cross talk thing on the 888 is barely noticable
Sure, I mean that’s what I am hearing too. I’ve tested it against the 887 as well. Balanced vs unbalanced. It MIGHT make a difference to some people. Amirm, who does the AudioScienceReviews, has stated he does not believe there is a benefit for headphones either. Even Zeos in his review of the SP200 stated he wasn’t sure at that point-and-time and was second-guessing himself about the benefits of “balanced”… which came AFTER his review of the Ethers, I might add.
I won’t dismiss anyone who says they hear a difference. I personally don’t think there is any real tangible benefit in most cases… but I would urge anyone to hold off on making that judgement, “Does balanced matter” until they take a step back and REALLY test it for themselves.
I definitely don’t think it should REALLY be a point of focus when shopping for a good headphone amplifier.
yeah but in another video Zeos called himself a balance whore lol. yeah i really want to try balanced and see for myself. I’m really liking the monoprice 788. has a EQ and built in DAC. I assume i can bypass the built in dac with another dac or something. their selling for 350$ on ebay
So I ran the 788 for a while. Just to point out… like the other 3 THX amps, it’s also not balanced end-to-end if that matters to you. It also is impossible to bypass the built-in DAC. Even if you plug in another DAC source… it’ll still re-digitize the signal… then process it a second time.
ah, so maybe i’ll try something else then
The main reason I used balanced is because my amps are designed to be balanced. That’s pretty much it. If they weren’t balanced, I wouldn’t really care. It just happened to be that the amps I like the sound best ended up being balanced, as a lot of modern high end amps are designed balanced
I’m no electrical engineer, but I could imagine that designing a ‘mono’ amplification circuit versus a ‘stereo’ one would be easier? Hence why balanced amps might tend to go for a ‘balanced’ design…
I don’t know if that’s it, but balanced has been a common trend that’s gotten more prominent. It’s kinda been something the consumers see and think it’s better because it has balanced, and it’s not as good because it doesn’t have balanced. So even if something might sound better single ended, it’s in the manufacturers interest to make it balanced to appeal to people. Also I mean c’mon why does the fiio k3 have balanced, like the fiio k5 pro is a better product and doesn’t need balanced to sound good
Yeah for marketing purposes does make a lot of sense as well. Well more sense than what I said at least… =P