I hear ya and I’m certainly not saying go with one over the other. Just since he mentioned interest in the tuba I thought I’d throw another tube amp jn the price range for comparison to help the decision a bit.
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Thanks for clearing that up for me @Bmn1251 , now the Tuba is crossed out of my list.
Yes that’s what I was afraid of, I’ll likely upgrade the DAC after a while if I purchase the Ares II or BF2 so then the CMA800i is not the one for me either.
Thanks @Polygonhell, I’ve already crossed the Tuba of my list since its not balanced.
However, I’m still somewhat unsure about the adapters effect on the sound. Does it not have any impact at all?
Yea I ordered my VCs with 4pin XLR since I already had the A90, which I sent back to the dealer today because I’ve decided to invest in a good balanced tube amp.
Thank you for your indebt comments @AECH! Sorry I didn’t make this clear earlier, I’ve decided to run a balanced setup so I need the AMP to be balanced as well. It seems to me that the Feliks Echo is not balanced either, correct?
I’m such a newb that all I do to find wether a unit is balanced or not is to search for “Balanced” on the relevant website. Do you have another tip for me, regarding how to see if its balanced or not without reading the whole page?
My list of possible new AMP’s is as follows, maybe you have a good balanced tube AMP to reccomend outside the price range?
I’m willing to spend about 2K absolute max, but would definitely be happy to find a cheeper one.
Violectric V281 - Strongly recommeded to me with VC, even though its not a tube amp.
GS-X-mini, obviously not tube - but it’s been recommended me as a good fit with the VCs.
Dragon Inspire IHA-1 - says “Transformer Pro Balanced output”, not read about that yet. Is it a negative impact on sound in any regard?
The Benchmark AHB2 - is this really not balanced? Hard to believe at that price point!?
Holo Cyan
Balanced really doesn’t matter at this price point.
Almost no tube amps for headphones even at higher price levels are balanced internally they sometimes have balanced headphone outputs, or balanced inputs, but most are internally Single Ended.
You can adapt a Single ended connection on an amp to a balanced headphone cable, you won’t lose anything in doing so. You cannot adapt a balanced headphone out on an amp to a Single ended cable, this will potentially short the amp out.
I just have a couple of these and similar lying around
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The V281 is well regarded, but I haven’t heard one, i’s stay away from the GSX mini, but YMMV.
I run almost exclusively single ended, but my chain is outside your price point
Lampizator Amber 3 -> DNA Stratus (does have a balanced out, but it’s not balanced) -> VC/etc
I do have a balanced setup, which I picked up specifically for a Susvara, where the extra power actually matters
Aqua LaVoce S3 -> Original Cavalli Liquid Gold (not the monoprice one)-> Susvara
Generally my advice is forget balanced/not balanced figure out what you want to spend and what amp makes sense. If the Amp is balanced use a balanced headphone cable, if the DAC is balanced use a balanced interconnect. Balanced isn’t a reason to pick anything, it can matter when you pick components around it.
If you buy a DAC with a compromised SE out, say Schiit Yggdrasil, or Gungnir, you’d want an amp with a balanced input.
If you buy an amp that’s balanced internally (Schiit Jotenheim or Liquid Platinum) you’d want to plug into the 4 pin XLR connector and run a balanced headphone cable.
Outside of that it doesn’t matter, there are reasons to build balanced components, at lower price levels they are at best questionable. There is no inherent advantage to balanced.
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Oh no, that shows how little I know about audio gear! I thought balanced was “high end”… is there a book or something I can read? Good thing you mentioned the DAC still should be balanced because that was my first thought as I started reading your comment.
Thanks @Polygonhell!
Balanced is just a topology, it’s a choice by a designer, it’s not inherently better, it does reject some sorts of noise better. But your trading off component quality for component count.
Every headphone site except maybe ASR has at least one thread to try and explain this including this one.
Forget about it, just make sure your amp has a 3 pin XLR input if your DAC is balanced.
The subtlety is in telling if the DAC is balanced, just because it has a 3pin XLR out doesn’t mean it’s balanced internally.
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Well I didn’t read all the comments but this is how I hear the Bifrost 2 vs Ares ii.
Bifrost 2 is very wide but lacks some depth in comparison. Ares ii isn’t as wide but has more depth than the Bifrost 2 making the Ares ii staging seem more balanced imo. Bifrost 2 has a full sounding bass performance and the mids and highs are pretty neutral. Ares ii emphasizes the bass mids and highs giving it a more energetic w shape feel. Bifrost 2 has slightly better timbre. Ares ii has slightly better separation. Detail retrieval is about the same.
Both of these dacs are really excellent. Haven’t heard an a90 unfortunately.
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As far as knowing if it’s balanced or not, looking for xlr inputs on the back or a xlr headphone out is one way, but you can’t always trust that because sometimes as @Polygonhell mention there will be balanced connections but it won’t be internally wired as true balanced.
No worries as well, I thought balanced was end all be all as well be learned it isn’t quite as important as I thought. All of my dacs are balanced but I only have one balanced amp actually.
If it has it then cool but I primarily run single ended amps now.
I mean the easy way is to look if people complain about the SE out on the DAC.
The Schiit Yggdrasil and Gungnir are both balanced, and I would run them that way, the Bifrost 2 isn’t, and I prefer it’s SE out,to the Gungnir’s SE out.
The Soekris DAC’s and Holo DAC’s are all balanced.
It just determines what they are best paired with. Even then I wouldn’t panic about it.
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I just read the whole thread. Obviously all the DACs mentioned are good options.
However, I am left wondering why the Topping’s D90 hasn’t been mentioned. Is there any reason behind this? It is below the $1k price range, so am just questioning it.
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The D90 isn’t really a forum favorite here, the concensus is it’s not bad, but there are better options for the money.
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Got it. That’s what I was suspecting. I’m just like: Hm. The D90 is made to be paired up with the A90, so why isn’t it recommended 
All makes sense now. Thank you!
Right am I right thinking your saying it doesn’t matter if its balanced or not?
Regarding the XLR input on the AMP, Dragon Inspire IHA-1 only has RCA inputs even though its a “high end” amp. In fact, several people has told me that high end amps usually don’t have a balanced input. It does however have a balanced output.
What’s your thoughts on that @Polygonhell?
Thanks for your comment @donjklassen, I’ve decided to purchase the dragon Inspire IHA-1 to substitute the A90. However, the dragon only has RCA inputs so I guess the DAC will be the one with the better RCA output between BF2 and Ares II.
Do you know which DAC has the better RCA output?
I really don’t know how many times I can repeat this.
Balanced is a choice by an amp designer, it allows an amp to cancel out some types of noise from the amplifier (notable PSU noise), BUT that’s at the cost of doubling (not exactly but close enough) the component count of the amplifier. So a Single ended amplifier will for the same cost have better quality components in it.
I have a $3800 DAC here that is Single Ended (RCA) out only.
I have a $3000 Amplifier that’s RCA in only
I also have a $5000 DAC that’s balanced and RCA and a >$4000 Amp that’s Balanced
Balanced is not “higher end” and it’s not necessarily “better”, especially at lower price points.
Pick what sounds good.
If you Buy an internally balanced Amp, use a Balanced Headphone cable.
If you Buy an internally balanced DAC there are advantages to a Balanced Amp.
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Yes, it really doesn’t matter at all unless you live right next to a radio tower and plan to put your dac over 20ft apart from your amp, then you might actually need balanced, otherwise it really doesn’t matter or determine sound quality (well I guess it can also help with ground loops but there are other ways of fixing that). And this doesn’t involve a balanced headphone out, only interconnects
For tube amps yes that is common but most higher end solid state amps these days have balanced inputs and outputs (the tube amps typically have single ended in and then take a transformer to make a balanced headphone out, it’s not uncommon to see tube amps with balanced in and se out either)
Yes. Take a holo spring 2 dac, that is a differential design dac, it has 4 ladders inside, 2 for each channel, with one handling the negative and one handling the positive side of the balanced signal for each channel, when you use single ended you ignore half the dac, so you really want to have a balanced amp to take advantage of the dac. Take lets say a lampizator amber 3, that’s a single ended dac by design, so it preforms best single ended, so no need to worry about that it doesn’t have balanced.
Amp wise, let’s say you get a gsx mk2, that’s a fully balanced amp and it sounds best when you run it balanced, where a pass hpa-1 is a single ended amp that sounds best single ended, so no need to worry about it not running balanced since it preforms best single ended. So you want to match a balanced dac to a balanced amp, and a single ended dac to a single ended amp, as @Polygonhell has said, it’s merely a design choice that you have to consider
And of course if you have an amp with a balanced headphone out, it’s preferable to run it with a balanced cable to the headphones to get the most out of it, where if you have an amp with only single ended out, you are already getting max performance
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Ok @Polygonhell I hear you loud and clear now, my uncertainty is due to my introduction to hifi, that’s when I thought balanced was very important for optimal quality. Now I understand it is not so, especially not if the cables isn’t especially long and I’m not in a very noisy environment.
Thank you again Polygonhell 
I see you’ve been well taken care of.
Rca is good out of both so I’d focus on synergy rather than outputs. Unfamiliar with the amp so unfortunately I can’t help you there.