is balanced protector so much better than single ended portable amp??

no :)

No, it's not worth it.

IMO, it is. 

It easily drives HD650's to sound much better than any of my single ended amps, including home amp and just does a great job with my other phones. To have a portable that can sound so good with my JH13's or most of my other balanced phones is a joy. Great music is brought to life. 

Does the battery drain faster with balanced output?  What is the difference between single and balanced amps in regards to circuitry? Does the source also have to be balanced?

i think that all the people that said no have not had the pleasure of listening to the protector. I owned both the protector and the Pico Slim, and ended up selling off the slim after 2 or 3 weeks having determined it was not as good as the protector. 

Though one area in which the slim wins is size, it is miniscule, and the battery lasts about twice as long, around 60 hours compared to around 25 ish.

all of the comparisons were done with my jh-13's, with TWag recable, using my Audio GD dac19mk3

EDIT: percentages are hard to quantify when it comes to audio, so i will refrain from including one, 5% to me might be 30% to someone else, it all depends on perspective. 

I will also say yes. To me the Protector balanced is clearly better than my iBasso D10 with HiFlight topkit. Comparison done with JH13 with TWag cable and TWag converter to 1/8". This not to say that the Protector is better than every single ended amp on the market as I have naturally not heard everything but I thought the D10 was a very decent amp and it is clearly beaten. On the other hand the Protector cost a fair bit more than the D10 and to that you have to add whatever it takes for your phones to go balanced so it will be up to the individual to decide if it is worth it.

My 2 cents is that for a lot of people, the differences will not come to light on most run-of-the-mill recordings currently on the market.  When you listen to reference masters either live performance or quality studio recordings conservatively mixed and mastered, the differences shine with the Protector Balanced setup.  With Lady Gaga or virtually any other pop track, it may or may not be as apparent.  Your system can only render what's put into it.  Garbage in/garbage out.

Check out HDTracks.com or ElusiveDisc.com for some quality recordings and obtain at least a few of them.  You'll be amazed how much crap is sold on CDs these days, in terms of quality, not to speak of the music itself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by momomo6789 

no :)

This.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by SoupRKnowva 

i think that all the people that said no have not had the pleasure of listening to the protector.

momomo6789 had a protector and sold it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by warp08 

You'll be amazed how much crap is sold on CDs these days, in terms of quality, not to speak of the music itself.

I despise the greater majority of the new crap out there, but what's really sad is when you find the few gems out of them, and then find it unbearable because of horrible sound mixing.  I've noticed it more and more as I've upgraded my gear, and unfortunately, once you hone in on the more typical flaws you start hearing them regardless of your gear.  What I need now is a good way to mask these inferior records, if relatively easy methods for such things exist...

I have tried most of the portable amps out there and I agree that balanced mode on Protector is better than most if not all of the portable amps out there.  It is better but not "so much" better.  I decided to keep both Protector and Pico Slim, I use Protector mainly at work and use Pico Slim during travel and taking subways.

One thing I did notice is the Protector is very depending on sources, I can tell the difference between iMod and iPhone as the source much easier than Pico Slim.

I have a regular Pico, Hornet M and Lisa lll.  The problem is that I usually try to use the Lisa lll, but I am waiting on JH13s which which don't match with Lisa lll.  So is it worth it to get a new amp on top of the pico and hornet that will currently drive the JH13s and then have to buy the balanced Twang as well.  Seems kind of a steep upgrade and don't know how full the results will be.

i really do not get why people should have a balanced portable set-up/rig......:/ so in my opinion it is so not worth it!