Question about balanced amps and needed power.

[tgray]

I understand that some portable headphone setups benefit from balanced output. But for a desktop setup, is there any huge advantage to some of these amps that have balanced output for most headphones? Is it just a power thing? And if so, what headphone needs more than a watt or two?

A secondary question, are the crazy output levels of some of these amps just about competing on specs? The power available on something like the Topping A90 seems… excessive?

For a headphone like the Senneheiser HD650, is there any to balanced operation or super high amounts of power on tap?

 

[twsecrest]

For headphones like the 300-Ohm HD650, I would go for a headphone amplifier with a balanced headphone jack.
It's about $60 or more, for a balanced headphone cable, for the HD650.
But a tube headphone amplifier (unbalanced headphone jack) would also be good with the HD650.
Do you own the HD650 or are you planning on buying them.

 

[tgray]

I own the HD6XX, which I understand is functionally the same headphone.

 

[twsecrest]

I own the HD6XX, which I understand is functionally the same headphone.

Yea, the HD6XX is the version of the HD650 sold thru Drop (Massdrop).

 

[AnalogSteph]

For a headphone like the Senneheiser HD650, is there any to balanced operation or super high amounts of power on tap?

Nope. A lot of people are perfectly happy with a HD650 or other headphones of similar sensitivity at a gain of 1X (0 dB) on a standard 2 Vrms CD player output, which should tell you a thing or two. These are not actually very hard to drive in the grand scheme of things. Realistically, if you just need an amplifier and just for these and other similar cans, you can pretty much buy one of the usual $100-150 suspects and call it a day. They may not be overly fancy and will be built down to a price but they'll get the job done.

The important part about balanced driving (once you have enough output) is in the cable, and the Sennheiser stock cable does the right thing by splitting at the plug. A good unbalanced output will have channel separation of over 60 dB with a 32 ohm load, with 300 ohm cans that grows to more than 80 dB... way more than needed either way (>40 dB would be good).