Rossliew
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2012
- Posts
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- 148
Thanks for the input, Tom. Sounds like it covers a wide range of headphones.
Thus, I suspect the "balanced amplifier" is mostly a feel-good marketing thing.
Balanced inputs, yes. Balanced from input to output ... meh, not so much.
If I wanted a bling amp, I'd pick some exotic vacuum tube and design a headphone amp around it. That'd give me the marketing bling and actually be fun to do...
Dunno if this ticks the box for "exotic"... http://korgnutube.com/en/
datasheets: http://www.nutube.us/
Most "balanced" design are really two single-ended signal paths run in opposite phase. That's not actually differential or balanced. If the two single amp halves match well, you'll get some cancellation of the even order harmonics. If the two amp halves don't match well (which is the more likely case) you'll degrade performance.
If I was to approach a fully differential design, I'd likely have to go all discrete. I'd approach it as a power opamp design. I have yet to beat the performance I can get on silicon with a discrete design, so I'm not going to go that route; in particular as the only reason to do so is to get a marketing bullet on the sell sheet.
If I wanted a bling amp, I'd pick some exotic vacuum tube and design a headphone amp around it. That'd give me the marketing bling and actually be fun to do...
Tom
That's Exotic Bling and looks interesting. I wonder if they perform better than old school valves?
Tom,
Please let me know if you do this.
I'm loving Neurochrome HA-1!
~ BMF
That's Exotic Bling and looks interesting. I wonder if they perform better than old school valves?
Please let me know if you do this.
I think someone brought it up a while ago on some bereft alternative forum, but found that the specs were lacking to make any real informed decision. Still, it'd be kinda neat.
p.s. the HA-1 is a rather malign offering from Oppo
I did come across a data sheet for them at some point. They're surprisingly linear. They also run at incredibly low currents (tens of uA), so one needs high impedances to make them work well. Maybe a CCS load or something... It could be a feature (low current -> low power -> small size) or a bug (low currents -> high impedances -> higher noise).
The best way to get notified is by subscribing to my newsletter (www.neurochrome.com/newsletter). I hope to get up to maybe 2-3 newsletters per year, so you won't drown in spam. Not from me anyway. The main idea is to be able to give those interested a heads up about future products and maybe the opportunity to provide inputs on what future products they'd like to see.
Tom
Hoping I'm not overstepping too many boundaries by posting this.
As many of you know I'm currently studying psychology and am taking a class in consumer psychology. As part of the coursework we are to conduct a market analysis and design a marketing campaign. For the analysis, we have devised a brief survey. I would greatly appreciate it if you'd take the survey: The survey is completely anonymous. It will be a big help to me, both for my psych degree and quite possibly for my business as well.
Thanks,
Tom