Balancing Headphones

It helps when the headphone already has separate wires coming from each cup. That makes it easy to change to balanced. When there is only a wire to one cup that then extends though the headband to the other cup, like the dt770, then you have to modify the cup that doesnt have the wire going into it to be able to receive a wire. To rewire the can to balanced is easy when there is a cable going to each cup. You just have to cut the 1/4 plug off and then solder on a set of xlr conectors. Here is a link with pictures that show how to do this. It saves me a lot of time trying to explain the process when it has already been posted.

http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/431493/balanced-xlr-conversion-howto-grado-gs1000

As far as I know you can. Most of the time you will see only 4 wires in the cable. 2 are ground and 2 are hot. Those grados in the example are sort of a rarity having 8 wires. 2 for each connection. The only time you would run into a problem is if the headphone shared the ground wire all the way up the cable. Then you would have to recable them. I dont know of any that do this with entry into each cup.

Most headphones can be balanced. If you are willing to recable them I am not aware of any that cant. It may not be practical or worthwhile to recable the headphones (as is the case with some IEMs with cables that are hard to work on) but theoretically, with enough effort its possible.

If you have clunky testicle-like plugs (dual 3-pins) clinking together at the end of your cable you wire the headphones like you wire a balanced interconnect, with the ground pin happily doing nothing. If you have a 4-pin XLR like you should have you wire the headphones like the K1000. Dont ask what that standard is. Its taped to the wall near my workspace so I dont have to remember it, but posted in several places here. find it, write it down, tape it to the wall where you work. If you have a temporary work-space figure out a way to keep it handy enough that you dont have to waste memory on it but never need to look for it again. After wiring headphones with 4-pins for about 4 years I think I almost remember what the 4-pin standard is. I think this means I need a drink.

Q3 was kind of answered in A1. Go wild. I liked my ER4s balanced, crazy but fun.

I have a question regarding balanced headphone cables:

I believe that for a balanced headphone cable, when using shield wires they would be connected to the unused pins of dual 3-pin xlr connectors, and go unconnected to anything at the headphone end(?). But what about when using a single 4-pin xlr instead of the dual 3-pins, would you connect the shield wires just to each other at the xlr end, or just leave them unconnected to anything like on the other end?

I understand that many feel that shield wires aren't even necessary for this type of cable but that is not what I am trying to figure out.

Thanks to anyone that knows, if there is a better thread for this please advise 

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod 

Most headphones can be balanced. If you are willing to recable them I am not aware of any that cant. It may not be practical or worthwhile to recable the headphones (as is the case with some IEMs with cables that are hard to work on) but theoretically, with enough effort its possible.

 

If you have clunky testicle-like plugs (dual 3-pins) clinking together at the end of your cable you wire the headphones like you wire a balanced interconnect, with the ground pin happily doing nothing. If you have a 4-pin XLR like you should have you wire the headphones like the K1000. Dont ask what that standard is. Its taped to the wall near my workspace so I dont have to remember it, but posted in several places here. find it, write it down, tape it to the wall where you work. If you have a temporary work-space figure out a way to keep it handy enough that you dont have to waste memory on it but never need to look for it again. After wiring headphones with 4-pins for about 4 years I think I almost remember what the 4-pin standard is. I think this means I need a drink.

 

Q3 was kind of answered in A1. Go wild. I liked my ER4s balanced, crazy but fun.

Just for the record, for 4-pin XLR it is:

1 - L+

2 - L-

3 - R+

4 - R-