Buying a BTR5 - should I go for new cables too

IEMs / Other In-Ear Monitors (IEM)
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I currently own the Blon BL05 and Grado SR80 (had these forever). For now, no other amps/amp-dacs at home but that will be changing in the near future.

I have the Fiio BTR5 in my cart on Amazon now.

Any advice on whether I should go for one of the Tripowin cables as well (for the Blon)? And if so, which plug would make the most sense - 2.5mm balanced, 3.5mm and 4.4mm balanced are my options. Since the cable would be for the Blon/Fiio combo and since the Fiio doesn have 4.4, I can rule that one out - leaving the 2.5 balanced and 3.5.

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I’ve haven’t purchased these myself since I already have too many cables, but these have been getting some love in other forums.

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Although balanced is objectively better, the short length of the IEM cable and headphone cable won’t produce a significant enough amount of noise to justify using a balanced cable. Unless your cables are dying, then it makes total sense to consider balanced because why not. Otherwise, if you can hold out on your current cables, save the money.

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If your trying to take advantage of the ldac and get the best out of your iems then go balanced . Balance gives more power to your iems vs 3.5mm. That would be my advise.

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So just generally the balanced out on the btr5 is much better than the unbalanced. That being said its somewhat dependant on how well your device scales. For the blons the difference isn’t huge but it is an improvement and given the choice I’d prefer to use the balanced 10/10 times if I have the option too on this device. Not super familiar with the grados but any headphone or iem that scales well will see a pretty big difference on the unbalanced vs balanced out imo. Great device though really like it

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Thanks guys. Given most of my source material would probably make detecting any difference other than a significant one virtually impossible, for right now, it’s probably not super important if I go balanced or not. Shit quality in = shit out – I get that. :slight_smile:

I’m thinking that if I’m “upgrading” the cable and they came stock with an unbalanced 3.5mm… I might as well go for the balanced. Besides, knowing my personality, I’ll probably end up owning a handful of each in each plug and headphone pin termination. ha…

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What is your music source or file quality (mp3,flac,etc.)?also is your device ldac compatible?Reason I’m asking is if your streaming mp3 over ldac then your audio quality isn’t going to be the best if your streaming flac over aptx or lesser equal than,your audio quality isn’t going to be the best.