[ChristianM]

I recently bought Hiby R3 Gen 2 and my friend asked me if I'm using 4.4 balanced cable and I said I never tried it and he said then you're disrespecting this dual DAC DAP, you should get balanced cable and use it, it will improve sound quality A LOT.

 

[BX700]

I'm interested in the answers to this. Out of the handful of IEMs I have maybe my favourites have been unbalanced with non-replaceable cables. Haven't tried A/B testing or anything.

 

[Tiax]

Balanced in itself is not better. There is nothing to be gained sonically that could not also be gained with a well designed SE amp.

For interconnects, the pros of balanced is noise immunity. For DAPs and earphones/headphones, it's mostly just marketing. And very rare cases of using a headphone that just wouldn't be loud enough in SE but would be with +6dB or less.

Balanced output may sound audibly different though on a specific device, biggest reasons: higher output impedance, failure to properly volume match, placebo.
The single biggest improvement of balanced headphone amps is psychological. "Balanced" sounds nice, "unbalanced" sounds bad.

 

[dunring]

The balanced connector is more resistant to interference, but doesn't help if you already have a silent noise floor and not having a problem with it.
The other is if your device has more power on the balanced side, it can sometimes let you stay in low or medium gain longer for better performance.
Truly balanced systems is only helpful for speakers, not headphones. It's just the connector that's better.