Me too. I‘m a great fan of things like pad-swapping, tube-rolling, etc.
But I don‘t leave it changed. Nearly every phone has it‘s original pads in daily use.
(LCD-2 has Dekoni pads (adds a touch of treble), DT1990 PRO has Dekoni Velour pads (slightly softens the treble without loosing resolution) and SR325e keeps Geekria G-pads (Improves bass, adds contour to space… and feels much more pleasant to the skin
))
Let’s (kinda) quote the great Steve G.: „You get older, you become a more experienced listener.“
If you are young, let’s say 30-35 years, you still have most of your audio receptor cells.
You may hear >15 kHz at 75 dB(A).
So you have the full hearing spectrum …but have just started to be a listener.
(If finished killing the messenger, go ahead reading)
Experienced listening is not about consciously hearing details like room reflections, differencing a cymbal touched by stick, rake, rope or brush, etc.
It‘s about having these informations, let’s say mechanical. The older you get, the more information you gather without really focusing. The better your hearing processes get.
Please, dear reader, don’t be mad at me, look happily forward to become better and better… and better than you are now. Doesn‘t matter how good your ears are, your hearing will become better your whole lifetime.
When I changed the 3.5mm plug to the 2.5 one on the RS2e, I experienced instantly:
- slightly more spacious sounding
- the single instruments got more contour
- the waves in vibrato became more differentiated
- bass became more precise (, not every one likes that)
- it was easier to discern voices, differ them from each other
- even in a smaller orchestra, the space between instruments became bigger, they were better
positioned. I admit not to hear that, if there are 20 violins in a row or something stuffed like that.
Maybe there are people with bat-like hearing, able to do so.
- listening to an audiobook had the most impressive effect. A single voice, just placed in the center
became more crisp. It got audibly more contour. (If the speaker tents to sibilants, they became
sharp. Not to everyone’s delight…)
If connecting the T1 2nd, HD800S, Sundara, 0|1 or Nightowls to the CMA600‘s XLR4:
- bass becomes more present
- bass becomes more precise
- soundstage becomes (slightly) wider (and much with the HD800S)
- better separation of instruments
- easier to differ voices from each other
- better positioning over the soundstage, even in depth
4 interesting things:
- the soundstage get‘s deeper (but not as deep as on amps I tried at the dealers listening room.
I guess it‘s something about the CMA600s sounding, even the CMA400 is doing better with this.
But had no analogue in. Bad for a phono guy.)
- bass instantly became much more dynamic. But this, I think, is based on the much more powerful
output circuits used for balanced outputs, not caused by the balanced principle itself.
- the overall sound of the CMA losses some of it‘s brand typical earthiness.
(Growling animals over a Questyle are an incredible experience. Try a movie with a tiger in it)
- the Sundara behaves like a different phone, it even loses some of it‘s cold, while gaining resolution.
It scales the most of these phones.
The phones use technically different XLR4 cables, but having these effects on all of them in nearly the same weight makes me quite sure, that’s caused by the balanced output, not the cable.
The more experienced you are, the easier it is to differentiate balanced headphone output from single ended. In the beginning it is necessary to focus on the headphones … let’s say behavior.
No one can tell you:“This is balanced!“ on hearing only one output. But I can easily say which one is balanced if I hear the balanced and the single ended one after each other.
Maybe not on Punk Musik…
The better a circuit is designed, the more easy it is to hear the differences. On a DAP you need a quality like the Fiio M11 to instantly hear it. On the KANN it’s obvious. But I could retrace these effects even on the A&K XB-10 using AAC via Bluetooth. I would love to try this on Ifi stuff, having great expectations there with Grados, but the Micro iDSD Signature, a product which on first sight made me jelling a ‘Yippi ka hey‘… was s%$%§% designed
without analogue in!
From my point of view I just started to become an experienced listener, being far behind guys like good old Steve.
[Note for newbies: Headphone balanced is kind of a discrete circuit. It has nothing to do with interconnect balanced. There is no real ‘ - ‘, as in negative phase. It just switches the single ‘negative‘ pole into 2 separate circuits, that can no more affect each other and have their own dynamics.]
about modding the cable)
