I think I’m at fault being the same camp here… but I have seen both in articles as well so 
So a adapter from 4.4 Bal female to 2.5 bal mele would be ok?
Yes as they are both balanced.
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Yes, balanced to balanced is generally risk free (I mean if you buy something proper from the market, not doing stuff on your own). Keep it mind that some adapters reverse the polarity of the channels, so you’d have Left side signal in R earpiece and vice versa.
Just for sake of knowledge - 4,4 mm pentaconn connector is 5-pin (+/-/+/-/GND) and 2,5 mm is 4 pin (+/-/+/-). In 4,4 GND might be used as additional shielding + it MAY be used as common GND for adapters from BAL 4.4 to SE in fact (but avoid implementation where the R- and L- are short circuited).
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This is completely safe.
There is however, an adapter that claims to work with SE → Balanced.
But I honestly have no idea if its safe or how it works…best to not risk it IMO.
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Yeah, that Adapter is sure to fry any headphones.
Never ever use an Adapter that feeds Bal into a SE Cable.
A Balanced cable with a SE Adapter is Fine. Never go the other way around though.
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I bought this adapter from AliExpress (3.5 Femele to 2.5mm Mele) to use with my single ended IEMs, I was no aware that it was a problem until now. That’s why I hear a lot of noise using this adapter, glad I just used for 5 minutes, the noise was bothering me to much.
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This really needs to be a wide-known common sense knowledge for all audio lovers… Now that I finally understand more about adapters
YES:
- Single End male to Balanced female adapter
- Balanced male to Balanced female adapter
Best AVOID:
- Balanced male to Single End female adapter
Footnote: “to” defined in the sense from where the power source is fed to the gear
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Generally that is not necessary true that all BAL → SE adapters destroys source/headphones. For example this DD adapter most likely works in that way:
Source. headphones
GND → GND
R- → no connection
R+ → R+
L- → no connection
L+ → L+
In the end you receive classic SE output.
Therefore the channel grounds are not short circuited and therefore would not damage internal electronics.
As a rule of thumb I would stick away from those solution though, as it is quite risky solution if you think that you most likely are buying something made in thousand of pieces and it is quite common to see QC problems in even expensive audio pieces
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I’ve just had to read this carefully three times, I must think about it the wrong way 
This works for me (based on cables, adaptors and DAPs I use):
Wee hole to middle stick = ok
Wee hole to big stick = ok
Middle hole to wee or big stick = NOT OK
where:
Wee hole/wee stick = 2.5mm balanced
Big stick = 4.4mm balanced
Middle stick/hole = 3.5mm SE
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So a properly wired, good Quality Bal → SE Adapter would be fine? Got it.
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These are the adapters I use:
And these are recommended as well:
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ty for the Reccs :3
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I be like
(luckily I have nothing that uses that)
Edit: ha, ha just realised that’ll be what the massive adaptor that came with the Xenns UP is.
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The thing is that in balanced source you have independent ground (meaning “0”) signal for left and right channel and the active signal moving coils in driver is sent in accordance to that. Those ground signals may and would in real life be different for both L and R channel (let’s say L0 = +0.05V from the power supply GND and R0 = +0.08V).
If source “wants” active signal from L to be equal +1V from L0 it is in practice 1,05V from battery GND, but it does not matter as you have L- = L0 in your cable. If you short circuit the L- to GND you receive an offset signal strength by 0.05V. For R channel you have identical situation, but you add some extra imbalance as R0 was not equal to L0 therefore R side would be having higher signal amplitude than L.
Does it make sense?
TL:DR good adapter would not compensate for the imbalance in source itself so it is better to skip them in total 
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I’m very sick atm, and reading all these posts just made my brain explode 
Weekend, at last 
I was feeling bass. Grabbed my Meles and ran this:
I’m healed.
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