[ruthieandjohn]

The only difference I can hear between a fully balanced setup and one that is single ended is in volume (and for some purported balanced systems, I don’t even hear a volume difference).

I can believe the argument that a balanced headphone can allow the cancellation of noise common to both channels, say due to long headphone leads picking up interference on both channels.

But I don’t really hear differences in frequency, speed, expansiveness, and the like.

Have there been either any blind listening tests, or any sample-to-sample comparisons, or signal differencing studies, that show a difference between balanced and single ended?

 

[castleofargh]

about testing this properly, we stumble on a typical issue which is the absolute lack of clear standards. in this hobby a balanced output can mean many things, to the point where basically if you just maintain at least 4 wires instead of joining the "ground" somewhere, then you call that balanced.
so in practice we'd have to run individual tests for each individual product and the conclusion would only belong to that product. while on the other hand, someone on the forum will try one so called balanced device, may or may not actually get more than a loudness difference, and he will unilaterally decide that balanced is better and does this and that universally. so what we usually read is at best generalized for no good reason, blown out of proportion, and maybe no true at all. not much we can do about that.

now in reality, there are many single ended devices that are in fact balanced at some point internally, and go back to single ended for the very purpose of canceling some noise created somewhere, before the signal might get altered in some other way making the canceling impossible(I'd imagine DACs doing that). and at the opposite end you'll have single ended stuff where the signal gets separated and inverted internally somewhere just so the output itself is "balanced". so beside the plug annoyance and marketing, having something called balanced doesn't really tell us much about quality in general or even what is really going on.

often you'll encounter a doubling of the impedance output and voltage(so up to 6dB louder) as a consequence of going "balanced". and those 2 changes could very much be the most significant changes you'll hear. increase loudness obviously, and the impedance change may affect some gears in an audible way, and some not. there is also the likelihood of getting a lower crosstalk, but for that to matter you'd need to reach noticeable levels on the single ended solution in the first place. and while possible, it's not the norm.
same concept for the noise in the cable. it looks great to talk about common noise rejection, but what is going to be the magnitude of that noise in practice? unless you have stupidly high sensitivity IEMs, or live inside a microwave next to 5 radio stations, chances are that whatever noise picked up by the cable is going to be insignificant. and that's before considering that a very sensitive IEM will most likely come with twisted wires just so that a good deal of those waves will cancel out already.

all in all, objective differences will of course exist, but depending on the variable measured, it is about as likely to find benefits to single ended designs than to the variations called balanced. jumping on something only because it's labelled as balanced is falling for a marketing trap and nothing else. I'm absolutely confident about that bit. balanced or SE is not why an amplifier or a DAP should be picked, at least not beyond avoiding one kind because we don't want to have to also invest in re-cabling everything we already own.

 

[ruthieandjohn]

@castleofargh , thanks! Interesting that “balanced” can mean different things for different brands, and that is exactly what I have experienced with regard to volume. No change in sound if volumes are matched, though.

 

[pstickne]

@castleofargh , thanks! Interesting that “balanced” can mean different things for different brands, and that is exactly what I have experienced with regard to volume. No change in sound if volumes are matched, though.

I’ve yet to hear a difference using casual and non-blind reset-to-zero ‘testing’ using the same balanced cable, only adding an adapter. Although neither my ears nor gear are ‘Summit-Fi’ . For commodity “Hi-Res branded” gear, it feels like several standard deviations of marketing.. where I’m not winning anything except the need for more unbalanced-to-balanced adapters.

After buying into the hype a little bit, I've moved to all-unbalanced cables (with adapters as required) simply to avoid having 'balanced output' as a feature requirement in the future.

 

[castleofargh]

@castleofargh , thanks! Interesting that “balanced” can mean different things for different brands, and that is exactly what I have experienced with regard to volume. No change in sound if volumes are matched, though.

it's not much about different brands using different definitions(if there even is a clear one). the term is so loosely used in the hobby that most times, another would better describe what is done in a product. but then that other term might not be as attractive to audiophiles as the very positively perceived "balanced". so I'm guessing brands are fine with the general blur as it works for them.
also if such designs requiring more than 3 wires weren't labelled as balanced, I'd expect many consumers to come whine that they weren't told about needing special plugs. the term "balanced" makes it clear for most audiophiles that the plugs aren't going to be good old TRS jacks or mini jacks. so I don't know that it's bad to use such a vague term to define many things, what's bad is to assume that anything under that denomination is the same. or worst, that anything with that designation is always better than a single ended amp.

 

[bigshot]

Balanced sounds nicer, don't you think?

 

[gregorio]

Interesting that “balanced” can mean different things for different brands, and that is exactly what I have experienced with regard to volume. No change in sound if volumes are matched, though.

Not uncommonly, the audiophile world takes something that the pro audio world (music recording studios for example) does and applies it to consumer audio, essentially on the grounds that it's more "professional" and therefore better. Such is the case with balanced signal architecture, which is used almost exclusively in the pro audio world. However, there's 3 problems here:

1. In professional music recording/reinforcement, cable runs are commonly at least 50ft and sometimes several hundred feet, there are often 6-10 (or more) connections in an individual signal path (as opposed to 4), the environments are typically relatively high in RF/interference and many of the audio signals we're moving around are 10 - 1,000 times lower in level than the audio signals consumers have to move around (and therefore any noise/interference picked-up in the signal path will be amplified 10 - 1,000 times). With ALL of these conditions, a balanced architecture can make a very significant audible difference but a consumer playback situation/environment doesn't have ALL of these conditions, in fact typically they don't even have a single one of them!

2. Without these conditions, a single ended architecture is (or can be) actually technically slightly better (higher fidelity) than balanced!

3. In the pro audio world, the term "balanced" means just one thing, it always requires 3 wires; a "hot", a "cold" and an "earth" for each individual signal (therefore 6 wires for stereo). However, as castleofargh pointed out, this often isn't the case in the audiophile world and the term "balanced" can mean different things, most of which wouldn't be considered strictly "balanced" by the pro audio world.

Putting all of this together, "balanced" in the audiophile world is effectively nothing more than a marketing gimmick and a very lucrative one, as they usually mark-up the actual cost massively!

Although neither my ears nor gear are ‘Summit-Fi’ . For commodity “Hi-Fi branded” gear, it feels like several standard deviations of marketing.

All else being equal (volume matching being an obvious example), we could measure the difference but given the typical (or even worse than typical) consumer circumstances, it's tiny. Even "Summit-Fi" ears wouldn't be anywhere even vaguely near sensitive enough to detect it!

G

 

[elmoe]

2. Without these conditions, a single ended architecture is (or can be) actually technically slightly better (higher fidelity) than balanced!

Could you explain this in a little more detail? I'd like to understand the logic behind SE potentially having higher fidelity than balanced.

 

[ruthieandjohn]

Balanced sounds nicer, don't you think?

On most systems (not all), it sounds louder. Once I turn it down to match single ended volume, I don’t reproducibly hear a difference. If I didn’t know which was which, I am pretty sure Inwould hear no difference at all.

 

[bigshot]

I mean the word sounds nicer. "Balanced" has a sort of Zen-like purity to it. I think people would pay extra for that. It's like headphones that are "flat"... ick! who wants flat?! I want headphones that are rolling like the verdant hills of Eire!

 

[Glmoneydawg]

I mean the word sounds nicer. "Balanced" has a sort of Zen-like purity to it. I think people would pay extra for that. It's like headphones that are "flat"... ick! who wants flat?! I want headphones that are rolling like the verdant hills of Eire!

That would be one explanation for the term "single ended".....something "unbalanced" sounds like a pretty tough sale

 

[bigshot]

Colored sounds much more pretty than flat.

 

[pstickne]

I’m quite a fan of my “singularity cable”. It has “synergistic non-divergent hologram timbre”.

Now where is that brochure..

 

[Davesrose]

I think the main problem is that audiophiles will generalize all devices as being the same, and that balanced now always means better. Therefore "balanced" mode anywhere in the chain...even if no balanced input or circuit design, but balanced output, it must be better. There's also a trend to think your impression of a headphone is gospel: which isn't just effected to some extent by source, but more importantly headphone drivers being close to ear pinnas that are all different shapes for everyone (and hearing sensitivities being different with everyone). It seems the main trend is that more amplifiers are offering balanced modes, and the chief difference within the given "balanced" amp is more power output than the SE output. I responded to one Youtube video that tried to generalize the difference between balanced vs SE: first defining balanced, and then basically saying you should always seek a balanced architecture for audio nirvana. I responded that there quite a few good and "high end" SE designs: and that at the time, my SE tube headphone amp was great for having transparency and adding some color with tube rolling. They liked me and replied that I must have a good system. I would just settle on that amp, but decided to have another setup at work: at work having a stack that's half rack size and wound up with the iFi iCan Pro. While my older SE amp has great audio quality to me, the only problem I've run into is that there's a radio tower near my house: I previously also got radio interference with a receiver, so I've tried having power strips with RF filters. I've played around with various ground loops, but still, my older headphone amp will pick up the RF interference if I raise "texture" knob. I think the "texture" might be some kind of feedback which will always pick up some RF with it. I've also had issues with RF interference with phono stages: but my current Denon AV receiver also has phono input and won't pick up RF like external pre-amps I've tried (probably because it's grounded with the receiver, which has enough isolation with the power strip). The iCan's transformer is external, and I can run balanced from my DAC to it, and try SE or balanced output and there's no RF noise when trying it at home. It has quite a few features for adding bass, tube/hybrid, and crossfeed. With it, I can try switching between SE and balanced headphone cables. I think there might be a very slight difference in FR in which SE has slightly more mids and balanced having slightly recessed. But it's slight and maybe intentional with the amp.

My main point is that you shouldn't discredit an amp if it's "merely" SE: a well designed SE amp will perform better than a poorly designed "balanced" amp.

 

[gregorio]

Could you explain this in a little more detail? I'd like to understand the logic behind SE potentially having higher fidelity than balanced.

Sure. To convert a signal into a balanced signal requires additional components/circuitry (at least a transformer or differential amp) and then to convert it back again requires even more additional circuitry. Additional circuitry always adds noise and distortion. The only purpose of a balanced topology is the rejection of external (common mode) noise/interference and therefore the only circumstances under which a balanced topology is higher fidelity than SE is when external noise/interference is greater than the noise/distortion added by the additional circuit complexity. These circumstances are common in the pro audio world, where we typically have interconnects of 50ft or more, plus speaker cables 100ft or more, plus a great deal of studio equipment right next to the interconnects which produce significant amounts of RF/interference. However, these circumstances are far less likely in the consumer playback world.

Some audiophiles are therefore paying significantly more money to achieve lower fidelity! Ultimately though it's irrelevant, it doesn't make any practical difference whether the balancing/unbalancing circuitry is adding more noise than it's rejecting, because in the vast majority of consumer playback circumstances neither the amount of noise/distortion added by the additional circuitry nor the amount of interference it's rejecting is audible.

G