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Balanced amp as opposed to dual amps.

post #1 of 6
9/8/10 at 2:34pm
Thread Starter 

With all the rage about portable balanced amps coming out, I am wondering if there is any difference with using a portable balanced amp such as the Ray Samuels Protector, or strapping two amps (say the Rays Samuels Mustang) together having one portable amp only amplifying a single channel. I am thinking of building an LOD for my Ipod to split the outgoing signal to one mono for the left and one for the right, and building a headphone cable that would work with such a setup. As I am no expert in this subject some advice would be greatly appreciated.

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post #2 of 6
9/8/10 at 3:02pm

i suppose the biggest reason no one uses dual amps is the practical aspect of carrying around two amps on top of your lod, and possibly portable dac.  talk about a crazy stack of stuff! 

 

also, using dual amps will still not allow you to connect your headphones bridged

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post #3 of 6
9/8/10 at 5:26pm
You might be better off building two CMoys into one case. It'd certainly cost less than buying two commercial amps.
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post #4 of 6
9/8/10 at 11:46pm
Thread Starter 

I just happen to have two Hornets in my collection, so I am wondering if the twin amp idea is going to work or not.

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post #5 of 6
9/9/10 at 12:07am


Delete


Edited by labrat - 9/15/11 at 8:49am
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post #6 of 6
9/9/10 at 6:08am

thats not balanced, thats bridged; dont worry it seems just about everyone on these forums mixes the 2 up. with bridged each channel and phase is still referenced to ground and provides very few of the benefits of true balanced output (more swing is about it, as CMRR and PSRR is not as good as with fully differential amps) with balanced audio generally the only place there is a reference to ground is in the power supply and most modern differential input/output opamps do not even have a ground pin, they servo the output to an externally reference point or internally to a point midway between the power supply rails (Vcom).Vcom can be grounded or biased to a reference voltage that is common to the source like the DAC feeding the signal, or an ADC the opamp is feeding to allow better CMRR through the whole chain and a lower impedance.

 

the idea will still work if you can be bothered carrying around the 2 amps, but it will not be balanced


Edited by qusp - 9/9/10 at 6:12am
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