[jdtenny]

So I've got this FiiO M11 with balanced output jacks. And FiiO makes lots of IEM's with balanced inputs that are supposedly well matched to their music-playing products. But they don't make any over-ear headphones.

As I look for a decent over-ear headphone for the M11, I don't see _any_ with balanced inputs. I was thinking this might be especially useful in considering headphones with higher impedance, as apparently more power is available when using the balanced outputs of the M11.

I'm noob. What am I missing? Where are the balanced over-ear headphones? If it's so useful for IEM's you'd think it was useful for over-ear cans as well.

 

[castleofargh]

any headphone with removable cable will do. you get a balanced cable with the right plugs and you now have a "balanced" headphone.

 

[Mightygrey]

So I've got this FiiO M11 with balanced output jacks. And FiiO makes lots of IEM's with balanced inputs that are supposedly well matched to their music-playing products. But they don't make any over-ear headphones.

As I look for a decent over-ear headphone for the M11, I don't see _any_ with balanced inputs. I was thinking this might be especially useful in considering headphones with higher impedance, as apparently more power is available when using the balanced outputs of the M11.

I'm noob. What am I missing? Where are the balanced over-ear headphones? If it's so useful for IEM's you'd think it was useful for over-ear cans as well.

Any pair of headphones that are able to accept removable cables that are terminated in a balanced connector. For example, the Meze 99 Classics are available with 2.5mm or 4.4mm balance connectors, and there are plenty of other balanced cable options for headphones such as the Sennheiser HD6XX family; most Audeze and ZMF full-sized headphones, etc.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

So I've got this FiiO M11 with balanced output jacks. And FiiO makes lots of IEM's with balanced inputs that are supposedly well matched to their music-playing products. But they don't make any over-ear headphones.

As I look for a decent over-ear headphone for the M11, I don't see _any_ with balanced inputs. I was thinking this might be especially useful in considering headphones with higher impedance, as apparently more power is available when using the balanced outputs of the M11.

I'm noob. What am I missing? Where are the balanced over-ear headphones? If it's so useful for IEM's you'd think it was useful for over-ear cans as well.

Most of them don't come that way by default though some have an alternate cable.

Even then those are alternate cables because the headphones have removable cables. Any dual side entry removable cable headphones will just need you to buy the spare the cable.

Note: most of these headphones are open back headphones that aren't useful outside of a quiet room and given their sensitivity and/or impedance will still get more power out of a decent single ended amplifier you might as well just use the line out from the M11 to feed a signal to such an amp.

Or you can try Grado which have low impedance and high sensitivity and will find most desktop amps to be overkill. Downside is those cables aren't removable so you're going to have to actually mod the headphones.

 

[jdtenny]

Most of them don't come that way by default though some have an alternate cable.

Even then those are alternate cables because the headphones have removable cables. Any dual side entry removable cable headphones will just need you to buy the spare the cable.

Note: most of these headphones are open back headphones that aren't useful outside of a quiet room and given their sensitivity and/or impedance will still get more power out of a decent single ended amplifier you might as well just use the line out from the M11 to feed a signal to such an amp.

Or you can try Grado which have low impedance and high sensitivity and will find most desktop amps to be overkill. Downside is those cables aren't removable so you're going to have to actually mod the headphones.

Thanks for the information. My reasoning here is that the M11 has all three of 2.5/4.4mm(?) balanced, and 3.5 unbalanced outputs, and my possibly flawed understanding is that its dual dacs provide more power to the outputs, and might better drive high impedance headphones. I may be wrong on all counts, but as I am trying to buy a headphone to match the device, and all the premium IEM's for FiiO sell are dual inputs, I wanted to understand it and know what my options were. The M11 is the source of all my dac and amplification. (I'd prefer not to have a separate headphone amp as well, most of the time it shouldn't be needed for the M11).

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Thanks for the information. My reasoning here is that the M11 has all three of 2.5/4.4mm(?) balanced, and 3.5 unbalanced outputs, and my possibly flawed understanding is that its dual dacs provide more power to the outputs...

A DAC is a Digital to Analogue Converter. It doesn't provide power. The closest thing to a DAC providing power is an integrated audio chip designed with the DAC chip and an output stage that kind of approximates what an actual discrete output stage does, but then you'd still be limited to a 7.2V battery shared with a CPU and screen.

Think of it like an AMD APU in a Sleekbook vs a CPU with a discrete GPU on a desktop or those new flagship laptops that need two powerbricks just so the desktop-grade i7 CPU and xx80 GPU will run.

What having separate DAC chips does depending on each chip design is whether it can simplify designing a balanced drive circuit. You can still have balanced drive and high output from a single DAC chip depending on the output from it, but most of the time it has less to do with how the chip works and more with "nah let's keep each channel completely separate" which works better in marketing ie how people will choose that product for being made that way rather than hearing the difference between just having two DACs whether the amp stage is balanced drive or single ended.

In this case what drives your headphones are two OPA926 op-amps.

I may be wrong on all counts, but as I am trying to buy a headphone to match the device, and all the premium IEM's for FiiO sell are dual inputs, I wanted to understand it and know what my options were. The M11 is the source of all my dac and amplification. (I'd prefer not to have a separate headphone amp as well, most of the time it shouldn't be needed for the M11).

Think of it this way.

Putting balanced drive on the DAP that has to work off a small battery and using it with a high impedance headphone or a low sensitivity headphone is kind of like putting a turbo on a 2.0L inline 4. Sure it'll run a midsize car like a BMW 5series or similar a lot better than the naturally aspirated version on the 5series that took you from the airport to your hotel, but don't expect that it's going to be closer to an M5 with a V10.

For a 300ohm 97dB/1mW headphone, if you really want eitehr to sound "alive," you'll need at least around 128mW, preferably 256mW. That player has 88W at 300ohms balanced.

That said if you used a newer design, low impedance, high sensitivity headphone, its 225mW at 16ohms, 195mW at 32ohms can already be overkill quantity-wise, enough that a desktop amp's only real advantage is you don't have to charge it or you get lower distortion and noise from a good Class A desktop amp. A Grado at 32ohms, 99dB/1mW only needs around 64mW to 128mW. The HiFiMan HE400S at 22ohms, 97dB/1mW needs 128mW minimum, preferably 256mW (same as the 300ohm headphone above, but has a lower impedance, and so gets that much more power out of the player). And these are single ended output figures, no balanced drive.

In sum, I'd use this player with my HD600 if my amp is busted, but I wouldn't buy the HD600 specifically to use with it. I'd use it with Grados and not blow any money modifying the cables though and you might as well just spend on an RS1e than for example an SR325 with balanced cable mod. I'd get the HE400S and if it's that cheap and all I need is to swap a cable, I'd get a cheap cable to run balanced drive on it.

 

[jdtenny]

...
For a 300ohm 97dB/1mW headphone, if you really want eitehr to sound "alive," you'll need at least around 128mW, preferably 256mW. That player has 88W at 300ohms balanced.

That said if you used a newer design, low impedance, high sensitivity headphone, its 225mW at 16ohms, 195mW at 32ohms can already be overkill quantity-wise, enough that a desktop amp's only real advantage is you don't have to charge it or you get lower distortion and noise from a good Class A desktop amp. A Grado at 32ohms, 99dB/1mW only needs around 64mW to 128mW. The HiFiMan HE400S at 22ohms, 97dB/1mW needs 128mW minimum, preferably 256mW (same as the 300ohm headphone above, but has a lower impedance, and so gets that much more power out of the player). And these are single ended output figures, no balanced drive.

In sum, I'd use this player with my HD600 if my amp is busted, but I wouldn't buy the HD600 specifically to use with it. I'd use it with Grados and not blow any money modifying the cables though and you might as well just spend on an RS1e than for example an SR325 with balanced cable mod. I'd get the HE400S and if it's that cheap and all I need is to swap a cable, I'd get a cheap cable to run balanced drive on it.

Math is good. I couldn't find a datasheet for the opa926 chip, and I don't understand the dotted line relationship of the opa1642, but I guess the M11 is feeding it 5 volts, and it has a 10 milliamp capacity which would give us 50 milliwatts to work with (vs the 88 you suggested - where'd I go wrong?). Anyway, my takeaway is that you're saying on the we don't have a lot to work with here to drive the more demanding headphones.

I was hoping that balanced pathways might have independent power capabilities that would provide more for each channel, though that would presumably rely on the opa926 chips and I couldn't find anything there, and as you can tell I'm in no way qualified to read them (or, apparently, apply Ohms law correctly, presumably the voltage varies too). For example this link https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/comp...r/BHitems/1475703-REG_1450339-REG_1362076-REG suggest that unbalanced is good to 150 ohms, but balanced is good to 300 ohms, but perhaps that's just bad advertising math.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Math is good. I couldn't find a datasheet for the opa926 chip, and I don't understand the dotted line relationship of the opa1642, but I guess the M11 is feeding it 5 volts, and it has a 10 milliamp capacity which would give us 50 milliwatts to work with (vs the 88 you suggested - where'd I go wrong?). Anyway, my takeaway is that you're saying on the we don't have a lot to work with here to drive the more demanding headphones

88mW is from Fiio's spec sheet.

And I seriously doubt it's going to kick out 5V into a high impedance load.

I was hoping that balanced pathways might have independent power capabilities that would provide more for each channel, though that would presumably rely on the opa926 chips and I couldn't find anything there, and as you can tell I'm in no way qualified to read them (or, apparently, apply Ohms law correctly, presumably the voltage varies too). For example this link https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/comp...r/BHitems/1475703-REG_1450339-REG_1362076-REG suggest that unbalanced is good to 150 ohms, but balanced is good to 300 ohms, but perhaps that's just bad advertising math.

It's better in the sense that two GTX 660 Ti cards in SLi are better than a single GTX 660 Ti.

Your problem is that the DAP is more like if running two RX 460 in Crossfire mode had the power consumption of a GT 630 or MX150.

And in the end a decent desktop running single ended, ie, not balanced drive, can still perform like an RTX 2080 Ti or RTX Titan. In SLi.

So just like putting a turbo on a small I-4 engine it's going to be better than the 5-series cabs around German airports, but you can't expect it to feel like driving an M5 in Hochenheim.

Putting that same turbo I-4 into a small car like a Z3 (ie an IEM or high sensitivity, low impedance headphone) however can be more than enough to have some sideways fun in that car.

 

[Mhog55]

Audio Technica Ath-Msr7b comes with both a single ended cable, terminated with a 3.5mm jack, and a balanced cable terminated with a 4.4mm jack. So does the Sony mdr-1am2.
Most headphones that require a dual entry cable, one into each earcup, can be used balanced. You just have to purchase a separate balanced cable.