Balanced cable upgrade for focal elear/elex

[gneumatics]

Hi.....

--- Back story ----
I've just purchased my first high end (comparatively speaking) headphone, the focal elear. I moved up from a 15 year old hd280 and was initially planning on stepping up to the he200i 2020 but realized I'm more likely to recoup lost investment in the second hand market and wound up with a spur of the moment deal on a bought but never used focal.

The idea was here was to upgrade the cable and pads overtime when good deals arose to bring it more in line with the Elex, ie clear pads and a balanced cable.

Atm running through jriver on windows 10, with sonarworks neutralizing frequency peaks (on asio) and apo bumping up the bass a little while using a variety of vst's for soundstage increase, ie I am not at all against dsp'ing the sound wildly if it gets me a variety of interesting signatures as a result.

No dedicated amp or dac. Am however running signal through a native instruments audio 6 sound interface (which has 6.35mm balanced and unbalanced outputs) which gives me 'just' enough volume once digital pre-amping has been taken into account.


--- The questions ----
So my main issue here is trying to source a balanced cable that will work from the audio interface (which offers left and right unbalanced 1/4 plugs) to the elears (individual 3.5mm left and right). Trying to figure out where and what to buy was very confusing until having a read of this specific article...
https://www.headphonesty.com/2019/04/headphone-jacks-plugs-explained/
... however after reading i think I'm still a little confused ...

a) The drop Elex balanced cable (as it appears in pictures on drop) looks to be a ts x2( left and right) to 4 pin xlr termination. My understanding is this IS NOT capable of being balanced with a trs (per side) as minimum for a mono balanced signal. Are drop scamming ppl by calling this a balanced cable when its not?

b) Does a cable have to be created specifically to be balanced? Could i not just buy two of these trs cables ...

https://www.amazon.com.au/UGREEN-Housing-Compatible-Theater-Amplifiers/dp/B00Y2LANUU

... and run from each earphone side to the left and right 1/4 jacks of the audio interface?

c) Will experimenting like this be likely to fry anything inside of the headphones themselves?

d) Why are some cable $200 + and am i really going to be that disadvantaged with this $30 solution to this problem?

e) Once running balanced I assume cable quality because slightly less important due to lower noise?


... Any help here is greatly appreciated!

 

[Deolum]

I'm not that into balanced and the whole science thing but there are some things i've learned:

1) You can sell anything to Hifi people. The Hifi crowd generally has no clue what it buys.

For example: take a pro audio device that costs 1000€. Is that enough to be and endgame? Of course not. What to do to sell it to the hifi crowd? Make it cost 5.000€ and remove some features. Now it's regognized by the hifi crowd as a potential endgame.

2) give things some fancy name like balanced. Many people don't know what balanced is yet they buy balanced. What is it? It's a feature for studios that handles extremely long cables (20m+), many deviced that cause interference and a very low input volume signal like a microphone. That's absolutely not what you find in a classic home hifi setup. In most cases an unbalanced setup with a balanced output can even cause a worse signal than a completely single ended setup. So consider if you really know what balanced is and if you need it.

 

[gneumatics]

Yep, I almost fell off my chair looking at the price of focal accessories sold separate to the headphones themselves. I could buy a brand new hd560s for the price of clear pads alone.

My hope with the balanced cables ideally is to ...
a) Increase soundstage
b) Increase volume without needing to buy a dedicated amp (I reckon I only need about %10 more headroom to cover me)

Do you believe going balanced would not produce these results?

 

[DuncanDirkDick]

a) The drop Elex balanced cable (as it appears in pictures on drop) looks to be a ts x2( left and right) to 4 pin xlr termination. My understanding is this IS NOT capable of being balanced with a trs (per side) as minimum for a mono balanced signal. Are drop scamming ppl by calling this a balanced cable when its not?

That's because people don't get the terminology right between balanced and differential. You're driving a speaker, so there's no differential signaling involved. 2 leads per speaker is what ppl call balanced (instead of a shared ground topology eg TRS)

b) Does a cable have to be created specifically to be balanced? Could i not just buy two of these trs cables ...

Yes you can in that case.

c) Will experimenting like this be likely to fry anything inside of the headphones themselves?

No, start at low volume

d) Why are some cable $200 + and am i really going to be that disadvantaged with this $30 solution to this problem?

Free money, probably not as long as they are properly terminated

e) Once running balanced I assume cable quality because slightly less important due to lower noise?

That's balanced differential where you have things like common-mode rejection using inverted signals to do exactly that. Doesn't work for speakers/headphones

a) Increase soundstage

Maybe, if the amp can't drive your HP in single-ended, bass precision suffers. For some that factors in sound-staging.

b) Increase volume without needing to buy a dedicated amp (I reckon I only need about %10 more headroom to cover me)

Yes, from what I've seen when looking over the specs

 

[Roseval]

I wonder if this is going to work.
As DuncanDirkDick already pointed out, “balanced” in the headphone world as a completely different meaning.
Instead of 1 amp driving a channel, you now have 2 amps driving 1 channel, 1 pushes and the other pulling.
As a consequence you can’t have a common ground for the 2 channels so you need a 2x2 wiring.
Using 2 amps per channel:
This will double the power.
This will double the distortion as well.

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/audio-interfaces/komplete-audio-6/
The unit has TRS balanced out.
This are line outs and indeed balanced, a hot, a cold (the inverse) and a ground.
Indeed the traditional balanced line connection as common in the pro-world.
You can’t drive a headphone with a line out as the impedance is way too high.
Even if it deliver enough power, the damping will be awful resulting in a bloated bass.
It also feature 2 headphone out but these are TRS.
As far as I can judge, you can’t use this unit for driving a headphone “balanced”

 

[gneumatics]

Gottcha! Was very much confused due to mixing up headphone balancing and differential balancing. At least all those You Tube videos taught me something I may never use again.

Yep, that sounds clear. Line outs are designed for mixers etc, not low impedance devices like headphones. So if I really wanted to move up to balanced I'd be looking at $250 min for a balanced amp and another $100 for the cable. All for %10 more volume. Think I might pass.

Thanks for taking the time to bring some light on this subject for me however!