iFi audio hip-dac: Tech Note #3
Actively goes where none have gone before
The new hip-dac sports a dual-mono headphone amplifier with 4.4mm balanced wiring all the way to the amplifier.
The hip-dac offers balanced in/out to take full advantage of the growing availability of balanced sources and headphones. The hip-dac uses the W990VST analogue volume control with digital Cyberdrive control. For amplification, our own OV4627 amplifier chips (4 channel) are used to deliver exceptional sonic performance on-the-go.
This S-Balanced technology in hip-dac means that, despite the amplifier being single-ended, this delivers all the benefits of balanced wiring.
Why did we feel the need to develop this?
Let’s take a look. The problem with TRS connected headphones:
The left and right headphone shares a single ground connection. This causes crosstalk and extra distortion. The lower the impedance of the headphone, the worse the problem. IEMs, in particular, are heavily affected.
Balanced connection (can be TRRS though here shown with XLR):
Left and right ‘negative’ are separate, the negative connection runs all the way to the separate amplifiers and no crosstalk/distortion happens.
Balanced output Amp:
The second amplifier doubles both signal levels and noise/distortion, and so, such a balanced amplifier has more output but also MORE noise and distortion than an unbalanced amplifier. This perversely makes such a balanced connection LESS
IDEALY-SUITED for IEMs. However, a dedicated negative wire per channel makes sure there is no crosstalk between the channels.
Plugging in unbalanced headphones with a TRS connector instead of TRRS will not be compatible, it will cause distorted sound and may damage the amplifier.
?
