(Ya ya, I forgot to put the rubber on the plug... )
Well, it's a little late, but as promised here are my impressions on the 99 Classics using the standard 99.99% OFC cable, 6N OCC cable, OFC balanced and OCC balanced. Just a recap of what I posted many many pages ago, I stated that the fact that the cable is OCC will have a greater impact on the sonic quality that the balanced connection, in which I basically said that it will do absolutely nothing. Will I have to take my foot out of my mouth? Has my perception of balanced changed? Well, you will have to keep reading for the answers.
Besides testing on the HDV 820, I also had a chance to try the 99 Classics on
this. Quick story. Christmas Eve my older brother came over to me and asked if I brought the Mezes. I said I did, but had given them to my niece to use for the night (she hadn't heard them yet). I asked why, and he whips out the Sony NW-WM1Z. My jaw dropped. When he handed it to me my arm dropped; I literally weighs 1 pound/ 455g! He then told me the price (not what he paid; he didn't say but I suspect a killer Black Friday sale) and I was floored! $4000 CND! But more on that later. As well, I also swapped the plugs on the balanced cable to use with my HD 600 (where it sits now). It's something I was planning to do anyway for my testing/review of the HDV 820, and not simply to get a more objective prospecting of a balanced 99 Classics. And as an unexpected bonus, I was able to try the Shure SR 846 balanced (also my brother's)! Anyway, on to the shootout!
OFC vs OCC
Equipment used for testing
- Sennheiser HD 600, Meze 99 Classics, AKG Q701/K240 Monitor, PSB M4U 1, Shure SR 846 all using both OFC and OCC cables
- 6th gen. iPod touch
- dodo cool DAP
- with and without NX1s amp
- iDAC's headphone out
- iFi stack: iTube2, iDAC, iCAN SE
- Sennheiser HDV 820
- Sony NW-WM1Z
* With the exception of the AKG and their mini XLR connectors, all OCC cables are are 4 wires terminating to a standard TRS plug.
As stated above (and many times throughout Head-Fi), a cable is not magic. It will not boost anything. It is a passive length of copper wire. The only thing a cable of better quality materials will do is allow the signal to be passed uninhibited from the amplifier to the drivers, thus enhancing the sound. A good analogy would be a high performance sports car racing on an asphalt surface vs freshly cured concrete. The road does not make the sports car perform better, it allows the sports car to reach it's potential. The tires will grip the surface better, thus allowing the suspension and steering to respond with greater ease. The car can accelerate and brake with less effort, allowing for greater handling in tight turns. It's not the road doing the work, it's the car. However the car could not perform optimally without the smoother surface. A more simple analogy would be a torrent of water flowing through a rubber hose, exiting out the end of a spigot vs a laser cut tube made out of pure crystal. Which flow will exit smoother, with greater ease? Now relate this to an amplifier and the signal being passed along to the drivers and how it could affect the sound.
An OCC cable does indeed enhance the presentation, in a sense. What happens when your upgrade the copper is you hear the amplifier for what it is. It's almost as if the cable disappears. This is why I always say that OCC peels back the layers of invisible grain (the imperfections of the copper) revealing greater transparency (uninhibited signal). How much enhancement can be expected? Given the equipment I used for the testing, all I can tell you is (to my ears) all of the headphones used universally gained performance using the OCC cable, however the result varied from source to source. If you want what I consider a good description of what OCC generally does, read a couple posts above what
@ryanjsoo said about the Meze OCC cable. It sums thing up nicely (and saves me the time of having to describe it myself).
All in all, if you want the absolute best performance out of your amp, OCC is the way to go, bar none! Just don't go all out and spend a fortune on an aftermarket OCC cable. Depending on the construction quality, $100-$150 really is a fair price, especially if it has good connectors.
Unbalanced vs Balanced
Equipment used for testing
- Sennheiser HD 600, Meze 99 Classics, using both OFC and OCC balanced and unbalanced cables, Shure SR 846 using OCC balanced and unbalanced cables
- Sennheiser HDV 820
- Sony NW-WM1Z
* I Jerry rigged the Shure's custom balanced cable for use with the HD 600 and 99 Classics for use with the Sony's 4.4mm balanced output. No soldier was used, and it was very ghetto with me needing hold things in place because electrical tape was not enough, but it worked without alteration to the Shure's cable. The things I do for science!
Absolutely nothing changed in terms of transparency! None, zip, zilch, nada, jack squat! Try as I did, and I genuinely really really really wanted to hear, anything, I could not hear any sonic difference between unbalanced vs balanced. OFC, OCC, HD 620HDV 820, or NW-WM1Z, it mattered not! I wish I could say more, but myself nor my brother could hear any audible improvements. Quick anecdote: After my brother and I finished testing on the Sony, we both were discussing how both outputs sounded identical and that having balanced out on a DAP is kind of useless. After about 5 seconds of silence, we jinxed each other by blurting out " Except for long runs " at the same time. Which is essentially what a balanced output is designed for. Unfortunately I was only using 3' cables. Ideally, I would have liked to have a 20' cable for testing, but I have no cables that long.
I do have to point out one factor that may be the reason as to why I could not hear any change in quality with balanced vs unbalanced. Both sources used are Sennheiser and Sony's flagship products. There is a possibility that the implementation of the unbalanced output on both are so good that the results were identical for a standard length cable. I didn't have any experience with balanced headphones and amps until now (only professional gear such as mixers, PAs and mics) so I don't have a large pool of data to pull from. But as it stands, from the two units I tried, the outputs are identical in transparency.
So I stand by my original statement that OCC will have a significant influence on the sound over a balanced connection. HOWEVER.... There actually IS a difference in the sound with a balanced output over one that is unbalanced: Volume! With the balanced output on both the Sony and Sennheiser, I had to turn down the volume by about 30% compared to unbalanced! This is something I admittedly had not expected, but makes perfect sense considering the original intended use of the balanced output way back in the day.
