[omegaorgun]

Thank you for the reply!

He said he will have a few of the amps for sale in a few months and he is a regular on diyaudio and has sold many amps, preamps etc. over the years and even knows one of the schiit designers.

 

[gregorio]

[1] The thing with most of balanced amps is they focus on the XLR out and the SE is an after thought and that thing called marketing.
[2] I personally love XLR connectors and if the amp sounds better for it then I am OK with that [3a] but I think the SE should not be overlooked on these amps like on the Jot and LCX (Just bought me a black Jot ).
[3] What is the reason they can't put the same wattage into the SE?
[4] For instance this SE amp my workmate made sounds better than the LCX balanced ...
[5] Saying that I don't think the sdac was the best choice for the LCX. They should have went with a dual AKM and then the 788 would of had a real fight on it's hands.

1. Most amps with a balanced output don't have an SE output, they only have a balanced output. A danger here, which appears to be very common in the audiophile world, is that it tends to be very insular: The audiophile world tends to make judgements and assertions of fact based solely on the audiophile world itself and ignores the bigger (and far more experienced) pro-audio world. This of course is deliberate, most audiophile marketing relies on misrepresented "facts" plus the power of suggestion and much/most of it simply wouldn't work on the consumers in the pro-audio world.

2. I personally am not OK with that, for two reasons (assuming a home consumer rather than a pro-audio environment): Firstly, it indicates the amp has a compromised design and secondly, it re-enforces the effectively false marketing that balanced is better, because what's really being compared is either just a difference in output volume/voltage (rather than fidelity) or, the difference between an output stage that has a design compromise and one that doesn't. ...

3. I've explained above why a balanced/differential output results in double the voltage. There's really only three options for an amp with both output types: A. Compromise the balanced output, B. Compromise the unbalanced output or C. Essentially build almost two completely separate amps housed in the same unit (in which case you might as well have two separate units) and I can't imagine there are many audiophile amps which opt for "A". Therefore ...
3a. I'm sure there are some/many dual output amps where you can overlook the SE output but there's probably some where any compromise is inaudible.

4. If it did actually sound better then it's because the LCX has a fairly serious design flaw. In which case, you are comparing a good design with a bad design, rather than unbalanced verses balanced. Not to mention, that it's even harder to compare balanced with unbalanced in the audiophile world, because what is often marketed as "balanced" often isn't "balanced" or isn't entirely balanced.

5. Why, what audible difference would it have made?

G

 

[dprimary]

@gregorio (or @dprimary or any other truly competent person or perhaps @castleofargh)—An electrical engineer was helping me understand balanced circuits a little yesterday, though they are of no consequnce to me (except once in a while for a run from a digital EQ/DSP to a powered speaker and headphone monitor amp—that’s just the technology that they use to talk to each other). His description lined up extremely closely with @gregorio ‘s, including the design of the circuit, with one point of departure—he asserted that in addition to rejecting common mode noise (sorry if I got the terminology wrong), a properly designed balanced circuit (and he did emphasize properly designed repeatedly) would in addition to rejecting common mode noise, increase the s/n ratio by 3db, reduce harmonic distortion, and break any ground loops. He did agree that the additional circuitry would add some amount of noise and distortion, but seemed to be saying that the 3db improved s/n ratio and reduction in harmonic distortion resulting from the balanced design would more than make up for this, even in the absence of any significant common mode noise. He readily pointed out with respect to all but the ground loops, if any existed, the difference in a home setup would be inaudible. He is a very solid “objectivist” when it comes to audio. He has written at least informal reference guides to balanced circuits.

If I am recounting correctly, he saw as the disadvantages of balanced circuits the extra cost and increased complexity and additional parts needed, and extra power needed.

Would you say that his view as to added benefits aside from common mode noise rejection (again I apologize if my use of the terms of art is a little askew) of balanced circuits of improved s/n ratio by 3db and reduction of harmonic distortion and breaking ground loops is true, false, somewhat true, has a kernel of truth in it? My interest is purely out of curiosity, I don’t really have any skin in the game at all. I’m just trying to understand, and my reach certainly exceeds my grasp.

What the the engineer told you is pretty much the trade off. If you want to more the paper from Bill Whitlock can be downloaded here -
www.jensen-transformers.com/application-notes/
you will have to register which should be free and they are worth the effort.