Aight then my pick is the cayin iHA6 amp. It’s better than the thx for sure imo. And is fully balanced. And can drive more powerful headphones
You could also find a used questyle cma600i
Wow how did i miss that one. nice, thanks mon
I mean, I don’t think someone would reasonably need more unless they wanted to get a stupid headphone that needs a speaker amp
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what would you recommend for that btw?
lol jk
It provably doesn’t, but I won’t argue with you. Your money
how do you explain the Ether 2 thing then Onaha?
Are you planning on getting an ether 2?
maybe…
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Your topic is a question, yet you are telling us the answer. As M0N said, the cable is a factor with the Ether 2 (I didn’t know that personally), but you are making a conclusion based on an opinion Zeos has. Zeos also raves about the Neumann NDH-20, and you returned yours because you didn’t like it at all. While I watch almost all of his videos, I often disagree with a lot of Zeos’ opinions. In this case, maybe he perceives an improvement on the Ether 2s when he runs them balanced, but I think he easily could have said they benefit from more powerful sources. Those two things aren’t the same. The balanced output on the 789 has more power (I assume he was using the 789s), but if he had a more powerful amp I can’t imagine he would still say it required a balanced cable. Also, there are a lot of reviews out there on the Ether 2s and not many of them are all that positive. I’ve heard these headphones a few times on different amps, and in no way do I think a balanced cable will make them any better or fix the problems the headphone has
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There can be a lot of reasons why particular headphones can sound good or bad with a specific amp.
If the impedances aren’t well matched, things can sound off.
Going to balanced on a particular amp will potentially give it more headroom, it will likely change output impedence.
Unless your running 50ft of cable whether the signal is differential or not really shouldn’t make much of a difference.
I for example like To turn down the output in my SU8 because for the can run a higher output volume on the Jot which I think sounds better, and amps do change in linearity based on how much gain is being applied.
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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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