| Originally Posted by m1abrams /img/forum/go_quote.gif Actually what he suggest doing could damage your amp. Shorting the inverse outputs of a balanced amp is asking for problems. Wonder if he will cover the damage caused by his product. |
| Hello Reza, Thanks for your email and questions. There is a huge misunderstanding regarding "balanced" when this term is applied to headphones. Almost all headphones currently produced are not capable of a balanced configuration and the ones that are will yield lower sound quality due to the miss-use of this concept. A balanced configuration consists of three conductors per channel the third conductor being a ground shield designed to channel "noise" away from the signal. This balanced design is necessary for microphone and instrument cables because of the nature of the "hotter signal" and the environment they are used in. In high-end audio it is not necessary (and is harmful to the audio signal) to use a cable with 3 conductors per channel with a balanced amplifier as the third shielded conductor pollutes the audio signal and considerably degrades the sound quality. The actual balanced amplifier design is responsible for the higher sound quality not the separate ground used because 99% of the time a headphone cable will not "pick-up" or attact noise and because there is only two conducts per driver (not three) and no falcility in the headphone to channel any noise (if there was noise which again there is not) away from the audio signal. Attaching a ground or sheilded ground to the frame of the headphone driver serves no useful purpose and only degardes the sound ( example the new T1 headphones) as I researched and discovered this many years age as an engineer at Sennhesier. The point is that the elimination of a ground and especally a shielded ground greatly inproves the sound quality of a high-end headphone cable and this is exactlly our approach. Any other approach results in inferior sound quality. In the case of our balanced K702 the negative signal path is combined in the 3-pin xlr just as it is inside the K702 headphones. The K702 uses a shared negative signal path and the K701 use a separtate one. A shared (common) ground will not short the left and right channel as many headphones used this design and all are capable of being used with a balanced amplifier. Using a K702 with a balanced amp with our E-series balanced K702 cable will give you excellent results as long as the balanced amp. is capable of this. Using a K701 with a balanced amp with our E-series balanced K701 cable will give you even better results (again as long as the balanced amp. is capable of this) because the 4th conductor provides more conductive surface area and this has proved to be benifical for analog signals. If you are interested in top performance from your K702's and balanced amp. the E-Series is the best choice. Thanks and please let me know if you have any other questions. Kind regards, James S Serdechny Owner/Designer Stefan AudioArt Welcome |
| The K702 uses a shared negative signal path and the K701 use a separate one. |
| Originally Posted by leeperry /img/forum/go_quote.gif English is prolly not his native tongue, but I wonder if he speaks the same mumbo-jumbo IRL...he looks like a natural, though. "There is a huge misunderstanding"
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| Thanks for your email and questions. There is a huge misunderstanding regarding "balanced" when this term is applied to headphones. Almost all headphones currently produced are not capable of a balanced configuration and the ones that are will yield lower sound quality due to the miss-use of this concept. A balanced configuration consists of three conductors per channel the third conductor being a ground shield designed to channel "noise" away from the signal. This balanced design is necessary for microphone and instrument cables because of the nature of the "hotter signal" and the environment they are used in. |
| In high-end audio it is not necessary (and is harmful to the audio signal) to use a cable with 3 conductors per channel with a balanced amplifier as the third shielded conductor pollutes the audio signal and considerably degrades the sound quality. |
| Using a K701 with a balanced amp with our E-series balanced K701 cable will give you even better results (again as long as the balanced amp. is capable of this) because the 4th conductor provides more conductive surface area. |
| The actual balanced amplifier design is responsible for the higher sound quality not the separate ground used because 99% of the time a headphone cable will not "pick-up" or attact noise and because there is only two conducts per driver (not three) and no falcility in the headphone to channel any noise (if there was noise which again there is not) away from the audio signal. Attaching a ground or sheilded ground to the frame of the headphone driver serves no useful purpose and only degardes the sound ( example the new T1 headphones) as I researched and discovered this many years age as an engineer at Sennhesier. |
| The point is that the elimination of a ground and especally a shielded ground greatly inproves the sound quality of a high-end headphone cable and this is exactlly our approach. Any other approach results in inferior sound quality. |
| In the case of our balanced K702 the negative signal path is combined in the 3-pin xlr just as it is inside the K702 headphones. |
| The K702 uses a shared negative signal path and the K701 use a separtate one. A shared (common) ground will not short the left and right channel as many headphones used this design and all are capable of being used with a balanced amplifier. |
| Using a K702 with a balanced amp with our E-series balanced K702 cable will give you excellent results as long as the balanced amp. is capable of this. |
| If you are interested in top performance from your K702's and balanced amp. the E-Series is the best choice. |
| Balanced headphones are just regular headphones that have been re-cabled in a special way. The normal three-conductor cable with the common ground connection is replaced with a cable that has four conductors: right positive and right negative conductors to the positive and negative connections of the right driver coil; and left positive and left negative conductors to the left driver coil. The cable is terminated in two XLR male connectors, one each for the left and right channel. A special headphone amplifier is used that has “balanced” outputs where each channel has a normal audio drive signal and a mirror image inverted drive signal. The trick here is that there is no “ground” to the headphones anymore, so there is no opportunity for the crosstalk distortion described above. |
