Sawdust123
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- May 3, 2019
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I think I need to invent balanced cable-lifters for the audiophile crowd. The typical ones are clearly single ended.
I suppose they might've banned it from product threads, but there's a science section where it seems perfectly fine to discuss audibility limits and stuff. I was able to challenge the notion of "Sabre glare" in a dedicated thread for example, and the preliminary consensus turned out to be that there's no such thing.I know this is an old post but I agree 100%. I used to love head-fi (and still do for several reasons) but the near-total ban on ABX chat means that so much goes unchallenged now.
From a price perspective though, they are not much more powerful, not even close to 2x, so telling the final consumer "balanced amplifiers are more powerful" is essentially a lie.From a technical perspective, balanced amplifier are much more "potent", delivering like 3 times more power when using the same output buffers, so this can achieve lower THD numbers and ability to power hard to drive cans more easily.
From a price perspective though, they are not much more powerful, not even close to 2x, so telling the final consumer "balanced amplifiers are more powerful" is essentially a lie.
I feel an aversion on balanced amplifiers and I don't know why, because it has been already proved that balanced amplifiers are providing more power and a better SNR and they have a very good rejection of mains hum, basically because of the way balanced operation works.
That is about as relevant as the marketing trick of showing a high price with a strikethrough line over it and a lower price next to it, which is how much you were going to ask in the first place anyway. You don't compare an amp's outputs with eachother, you compare them with the outputs of other (SE) amps available on the market for the same price. That's what I meant when I said "from a price perspective". Balanced amps being about massive power is just marketing. The only thing you will consistently get out of them is lower crosstalk, that's all. Anything else is exceptional/situational/synergy/luck, and promising it to everyone is misleading the consumers (a.k.a. marketing).My Matrix HPA-3B has over 1.5W in single-ended operation and over 4.5W in balanced mode. Schiit Ragnarok has 6W/ch. in single ended and 24W when balanced
My Matrix HPA-3B has over 1.5W in single-ended operation and over 4.5W in balanced mode. Schiit Ragnarok has 6W/ch. in single ended and 24W when balanced
It's when I test my amplifier, usually 0.0001x% thd with 8ohm load 100mw SINGLE CHANNEL DRIVEN, in DUAL CHANNEL DRIVEN test, the distortion rise up to 0.002x% basically 26db+ degradation in performance.
Perhaps it pays to consider a wider signal delivery chain. The quoted posts seem to indicate that an amp's power supply unit may have something to do with the elevated levels of distortions in one channel when a signal is present on another channel. This effect may be also measuring as elevated crosstalk.
The first post says that Ragnarok (weighting 32 pounds, consuming up to 400 watts) delivers 4x more power with doubling of effective rails voltage, which is as expected. The HPA-3B (3.75 pounds, 25 watts) does not - it delivers 3x instead of expected 4x - which gives a reason to suspect that HPA-3B output is limited by its power supply.
The second post describes the behavior of Topping DX3 Pro. Out of the box, it is equipped with a little wall wart 15W switching power supply. Interestingly, one can buy a popular linear power supply compatible with DX3 Pro, which, while nominally delivering the same power, has much beefier capacitors. When only DAC's line outputs are considered, the type of the power supply doesn't appear to make a difference.
[...]
Hi
Are these genuine Canare starquad XLR cables??
http://www.ghentaudio.com/part/a03.html
The info is confusing. It says Canare, and maked "made in Japan" on the cable, but then it says manufactured in China. Are Ghent cables legit or fake?
Thanks
Exactly Ghent makes great DIY amplifier kits, DC cables and interconnects. Never had any problem.Ghent Audio is big and well known enough that it's very unlikely that they will be using counterfeits, so most likely it means the raw/unterminated cable is Canare L-4E6S (and made in Japan), but the manufacturing process (of cutting them to length and then terminating to XLR-M / XLR-F) is done in China.
Sorry, my bad...but the topic, as written, was broad. Didn't know it was only headphones.
BTW, does the typical audiophile listen in front of his PC, over cans, these days?
I'm glad I found this thread. I'd recently looked for an article on balanced headphone cables and generally found nothing actually useful until this thread.
...
I do indeed still think that most of the "balanced headphone" effects are snake-oil, but the crosstalk thing is no joke and had a major effect for me when testing at audiophile quality levels. At this point I'm now deeply irritated that manufacturers use 3-wire for headphones as the default when they could use 4 wire and cheaply get better quality.
Anyway, thanks again for this thread for confirming my results!
Amp +R ------(resistor1)--------+---------(to headphone +R)---->
|
(resistor2)
|
Amp -R ------(resistor1)--------+---------(to headphone -R)---->
Amp +R ------(resistor1)--------+---------(to headphone +R)---->
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(resistor2)
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Amp ground ---------------------+-----(to headphone ground)---->