That would require a fair bit more dismantling of my desk setup than I'm prepared to do right now; I might be able to revisit it later this week though (and at some point in the next month or two, I'll be sending it to Amir for testing anyway).
Purely subjectively, I've noticed no distortion from the introduction of the switch over the direct connection I briefly used previously, but obviously you shouldn't take that as anything other than some random person's perception, and given the track record of stuff I've sent to Amir, I'm sure it'll test horribly. Also, keep in mind that this is a passive switch; I'd actually expect it to attenuate the signal a bit and lower the noise floor, rather than raise it, but this is consumer electronics: nothing is ever as you expect it.
FWIW, the SE846s have been the worst headphones I've ever owned as far as equipment matching goes (most sources and amps I connect them have a high enough noise floor to irritate me), and the fact that I was able to use the 789 without any tinkering made my day. And to my own ears, the balanced connection at reasonable volumes was fine, although again, you wind up with a pretty narrow range on the amp without lowering the source gain a bit.
Purely subjectively, I've noticed no distortion from the introduction of the switch over the direct connection I briefly used previously, but obviously you shouldn't take that as anything other than some random person's perception, and given the track record of stuff I've sent to Amir, I'm sure it'll test horribly. Also, keep in mind that this is a passive switch; I'd actually expect it to attenuate the signal a bit and lower the noise floor, rather than raise it, but this is consumer electronics: nothing is ever as you expect it.
FWIW, the SE846s have been the worst headphones I've ever owned as far as equipment matching goes (most sources and amps I connect them have a high enough noise floor to irritate me), and the fact that I was able to use the 789 without any tinkering made my day. And to my own ears, the balanced connection at reasonable volumes was fine, although again, you wind up with a pretty narrow range on the amp without lowering the source gain a bit.