I’ll be sure to let you know whenever my xlr cables show up. Really enjoying my 95X though so I can hold out till the zmf cable ships
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What in the actual fuck just happened. So I had my cans plugged into the Monolit LP single ended (cause no balanced cable). Just got my hold-over till I make my own. It sounds completely different now.
WHAT IS HAPPENING. Imaging, soundstage, separation, clarity all just opened right the fuck up. It’s like listening to a completely fucking different amplifier / cans.
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The balanced out is a fair bit better sounding than the single ended, the single ended is mediocre in comparison lol. Glad you are enjoying it more
Yea. I had read some stuff with people saying it was different. But I didn’t think the jump would be that extreme.
If only the single ended sounded like this / was better implemented…
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Yes I think I mentioned Balanced is better 
It’s the only manual I’ve seen actually state don’t judge the amp until you’ve tried it Balanced.
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I can think of other amps that should have this as well lol
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Yea. I was super skeptical.
Apparently it really is only there for convenience.
Trade offs, had to support SE, used the budget elsewhere.
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I mean. The best thing would be to include a trs to balanced adapter or optional wire with whatever combination of common headphone connects.
Then again it was a pleasant surprise to hear just how much this has improved with the balanced cable. Gives me a bit more appreciation for it.
Differential amps just don’t generally play well with SE outputs, the conversion choices all suck to varying degrees.
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Pretty much, if you buy a differential amp then use it balanced lol
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So what concerns me is why the conversion is that bad? Like I’m a/bing and the difference is real significant. Like almost everything improved imo.
Forgive my ignorance about the interior electronics, but is it really that hard to convert from se to balanced and back? Am reading up on it now.
nice pairing. thats what i got lol
is it dark? i heard it was a darker headphone?
It’s a differential amp, it takes an input which is +ve and -ve where the -ve is just the inverse of the +ve, it then amplifies the two signals independently. The value of doing this is any “Noise” introduced on the +ve is also introduced to the -ve.
So your effective output is (+ve + Epsilon) - (-ve + Epsilon) where Epsilon represents the added noise, and as you can see the Epsilon terms cancel out, leading to a lower noise floor (and everything else you mentioned as a result).
On balanced headphones those 2 outputs get sent directly to the headphones there is no additional summing circuit).
Now the issue becomes a SE output is just +Ve and ground, so you have to either just drop -Ve on the ground (no Epsilon cancellation), use an opamp to combine the incoming +Ve/-Ve (lower quality output and additional cost) or use a transformer to couple input to output (VERY expensive)
If you really care you can go buy a high quality transformer to do the conversion, but they can run hundreds of dollars.
Higher end pure tube amps that are already transformer coupled, don’t incur the quality issue.
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Ahhhhhh. Ok makes so much more sense. Thank you 
I’m reading out of here right now…
https://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/opamp/opamp_5.html
Ok. I don’t quite get why the quality gets reduced. Looking into it.
I also have had this book coming for a while cause I was really interested in learning more when I grabbed the Archel.
I keep hearing about OTL amps. Now I gotta go figure this stuff out…RIP doing any actual work today.
It’s an additional active component, you have additional passive components with tolerances etc.
Anything in the signal path affects the sound, it’s why you see efforts in higher end amps to simplify basic circuit and comments like “The only good cap is no cap”.
I believe the Schiit differential stuff (Jotenheim, Gungnir, Yggdrassil) use this solution and while the drop off isn’t dramatic, their SE outputs are still considered inferior.
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That philosophy will do a nice 180 and backfire spectecularly in ones face the moment the power supply experiences any deviation from normal conditions…
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It’s normally in reference to inter stage coupling, no one builds amps without capacitors, but there are some designers who go to great lengths and costs to avoid them.
Most higher end manufacturers just spend for better quality components.
I own an output capacitorless amp, and it sounds great, but is that because of not having output caps? IDk lol