[castleofargh]

 

any significant evidence that most balanced amps have lower distortions that SE amps?

Not sure if this was directed toward my comments... But, why would someone suggest that balanced amps have lower distortion either?

If I replicate the same circuitry four times, how is the distortion going to be any higher or lower than the one circuit I replicated? It's the same circuit!

And I agree with you, balanced solves a problem that doesn't exist for most people. But for me, as you know, it comes down to what measures better.

The ironic part is that I'm trying to sell the only balanced amp I have... It's much larger than my SE amp, so less portable.

Sent from my E5803 using a highly trained, special forces carrier pigeon

I somehow jumped from noise to disto somewhere, dunno if that's after reading your post but it wasn't on purpose ^_^. oops
but there could be a lot to be said about both and the idea of multiplying the same circuit. we could argue that because we won't have X times the exact same components, having more will create more variations. we could argue that each component generates a noise so more components will be more noises. but of course all that would require case by case observation and there is no saying if those noises and distortions will be of any significant magnitudes compared to the values already at the output. to me that's just reassuring rant for whichever side someone picked for no good reason. if something is clearly superior, it should be easy to measure. the rest is me making glorified self justification.

 

[GRUMPYOLDGUY]

 

any significant evidence that most balanced amps have lower distortions that SE amps?

Not sure if this was directed toward my comments... But, why would someone suggest that balanced amps have lower distortion either?

If I replicate the same circuitry four times, how is the distortion going to be any higher or lower than the one circuit I replicated? It's the same circuit!

And I agree with you, balanced solves a problem that doesn't exist for most people. But for me, as you know, it comes down to what measures better.

The ironic part is that I'm trying to sell the only balanced amp I have... It's much larger than my SE amp, so less portable.

Sent from my E5803 using a highly trained, special forces carrier pigeon

I somehow jumped from noise to disto somewhere, dunno if that's after reading your post but it wasn't on purpose ^_^. oops
but there could be a lot to be said about both and the idea of multiplying the same circuit. we could argue that because we won't have X times the exact same components, having more will create more variations. we could argue that each component generates a noise so more components will be more noises. but of course all that would require case by case observation and there is no saying if those noises and distortions will be of any significant magnitudes compared to the values already at the output. to me that's just reassuring rant for whichever side someone picked for no good reason. if something is clearly superior, it should be easy to measure. the rest is me making glorified self justification.

Yes, in practice there will be extremely small variations in parts... Even in the same lot. But I don't think that was the point of the poster I was responding to. He made it seem like there was an inherent and measurable difference due to the design methodology... As if there is some signal performance trade off in using balanced... There simply isn't.

By the way, I have (unfortunately) been stuck doing some acceptance testing on the production side of things at work before... I have never observed a measurable difference in active circuitry due to part variation. That's not to say that if I looked way down into the finest resolution my test equipment had that I would not see it. But I think what you are suggesting is more theory than practice. That said, I acknowledge it is possible.

I wish when people like the poster I was referring to argued about things like this, they used rational engineering principles in their argument. For example he could have said balanced is worse because of power consumption, thermal, and cost reasons which do not provide an audible advantage... And I would have not said anything. But to make an argument with no reasoning other than some marketing/PR release from some VP and masquerading it as some kind of whitepaper... That's just nuts.



Sent from my E5803 using a highly trained, special forces carrier pigeon

 

[CanadianMaestro]

I think the signal-to-noise of perspectives on this needs adjustment. From what I can gather, balanced lines are beneficial if the system is in a noisy enviro where the gear are joined by interconnects that are > a few metres apart.

 

[Ancipital]

  I think the signal-to-noise of perspectives on this needs adjustment. From what I can gather, balanced lines are beneficial if the system is in a noisy enviro where the gear are joined by interconnects that are > a few metres apart.

 
Though induced common mode noise on headphone cable isn't really a massive problem. Even in the sorts of situations where people generally use balanced lots-of-things (balanced analogue, AES/EBU, RS422 etc. with big power feeds flopping about everywhere), the sound guys tend not to bother with differential drive of headphones. Usually they just fish some disreputable-looking HD25 with the stock cable out of their bag and get on with it 

 
Part of that is because they're just monitoring over the headphones- that bit of signal never goes anywhere, but realistically, they tend not to actually encounter a problem, either. Headphone cables are usually pretty short, and not wrapped around giant Tesla coils.
 
(That said, the last big live thing that I did, we were carrying stuff over fibre for the longer cable runs, using nice little converter boxes, for SDI, and then full-on IP based stuff for the rest of it, which is even nicer.. forget having to run signal at right-angles to power there! )