Hi James
Obviously the BHA-1’s “raison d'être” is that of a fully balanced headphone amp and an excellent one at that but I’m sure there must be other users who are also experiencing the opposite problem with the gain on the unbalanced input.
This sort of mirrors the headphone gain on my previous BP25P and B60R and was surprised that the maximum gain was not increased on the BHA-1 when using unbalanced sources.
The way I see it is that if the overall gain of the BHA-1 is increased to accommodate the unbalanced input the balanced chain may be too high, the gain switch and volume control have been configured as such to accommodate a number of different headphones and works as intended.
Maybe I’m asking too much, but I’m wondering if in fact it may have been better to have incorporated a more conventional linear volume control and that the gain switch equalized the volume level when switching between the balanced and unbalanced input as the ‘majority” of users appear to be using full-sized lower efficient phones.
Robert
I actually thinks the opposite, even the "low" 14db gain on BHA-1 is a bit too high for me..
Even using HD800 in single-ended mode with single-ended input to the amp, the gain is still a little too high for me that I'll have to use digital volume control in some cases. And even doing so my volume knob still never passed 9 o'clock. Not to say with the efficient TH600, where use of digital volume control is a must. Noise level isn't a problem though.
I would hope the next product to have true low-gain modes like 0db, 6db etc. (btw please continue the non-ventilation-holes housing design as it is a big plus in BHA-1 to me...)