Balanced ipod lod for Toucan?

[funkmeister]

I wonder how valuable balanced really is. It appears that the high quality recabling of HD800 headphones to balanced actually increased distortion.

 

[BattleBrat]

I never said they were balanced, hey were the only way to get audio into my LISA III and I wanted R-,R+, L-,L+ separate from the lod to the rca's so I had them made.
 
Quote:

BattleBrat, I think they are just stereo RCA.  Two channel stereo RCA is different from balance configuration.  I could be wrong, but I don't think your Lisa L3 is a balance amplifier.  The Toucan PB1 and PB2 are true balance amps.  So is the RSA SR71B.  The Lisa amps can take regular RCA L/R stereo analogue input but they are not balance input.  In order to get true balance input from a source, the only way to get it is to use a balance DAC like the Ibasso DB1/2 where it will take digital signal from a source and split the signal up for true balance output.  I doubt that the RCA output of the istreamer is balance out either.  I think they are just stereo out.  Somewhere along the signal path, the signal has to be split digitally into balance signals.  I copy the exerpt from Headroom with regard to their balance Dac.  But most balance dac follow similar typology.
*SNIP*