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New headphone amplifier from Bryston
Jun 24, 2015 at 10:23 PM Post #1,591 of 2,450
wilcox said:
From my perspective there would be no sonic benefits from going balanced into the BHA-1 since, as you say, it's converted to single-ended any way. My BDA-2 sounds the same driving the BHA-1 either way. I currently own a Bifrost and formerly owned a Gungnir. My advise is to just enjoy your Bifrost. The Gungnir is a slight bit better, but the Bifrost is nearly as good. A worthwhile upgrade wound be the Yggdrasil.
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Thanks for the advice.  I just upgraded to the uber Bifrost...and am looking at the Gungnir...wondering why you ended up selling the gungnir and keeping the bifrost.
 
Jun 24, 2015 at 10:24 PM Post #1,592 of 2,450
Hmmm....very interesting.
 
It is indeed a great amp. Just surprised why a double conversion was implemented. Oh well, I defer to Bryston's know-how, they obviously have a great track record.
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Jun 24, 2015 at 10:31 PM Post #1,594 of 2,450
makan said:
Thanks for the advice.  I just upgraded to the uber Bifrost...and am looking at the Gungnir...wondering why you ended up selling the gungnir and keeping the bifrost.
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With the BDA-2, the Gugnir was redundant. My Bifrost Uber feeds my Valhalla 2 in another location. An excellent combo for Sennheisers.
 
Jun 24, 2015 at 10:31 PM Post #1,595 of 2,450
wilcox said:
It's totally true. Take a look at the schematic that comes with the amp. You can also download it from the Bryston website (it's at the end of the user manual, I believe). This has been discussed many times earlier in this thread. Don't worry though. It's still a superb amp and my reference.
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I've read that many times too CanadianMaestro, doesn't seem in question... though, as many skills as I have, electrical engineering clearly isn't one of them. It is dual mono, but the sense seems to be that the two signals are signal ended through the amp's circuitry. That said that thing is shockingly drop dead silent, and clean sounding, which again reinforces my thought that balanced isn't all some people crack it up to be :p
 
Jun 24, 2015 at 10:34 PM Post #1,597 of 2,450
ziggysp2000 said:
  That said that thing is shockingly drop dead silent, and clean sounding, which again reinforces my thought that balanced isn't all some people crack it up to be :p
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Studio engineers use balanced cabling mostly for their common mode noise rejection and higher voltage swings,  advantageous over fairly long cable distances.
 
Jun 24, 2015 at 11:14 PM Post #1,601 of 2,450
makan said:
 
Bay Bloor still going strong and one of the only few places that will let you have a 30 day no-nonsense money back for headphones.
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I haven't been there in ages. Last time I browsed, they had a good selection of Tivoli gear is what I remembered. But that was long before my hi-end audiophoolery.....didn't know one end of a tonearm from the other
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Jun 25, 2015 at 8:21 AM Post #1,603 of 2,450
Hi Folks,
 
I wrote this a while ago but it may help.
 

Is Your System Out Of Balance?​
 
One question which keeps coming up over and over is the controversy regarding audio components being "fully balanced" versus what is sometimes referred to as "balanced converting to single ended" at the input of the electronic component (preamp, electronic crossover, amplifier etc). The correct term for this balanced converting to single ended is more accurately referred to as "differential amplifier balancing" 
 
Popular mythology has seen fit to 'bless' the concept of 'fully-balanced' (meaning of course, two completely separate signal paths through a component, with its attendant doubling of parts cost and complexity, and halving of reliability). This approach completely misses the point, which is, of course, to eliminate hum and noise picked up by the audio cables feeding the component. 
 
The reason for this is that a differential amplifier, and this is -REALLY IMPORTANT- ‘rejects any common-mode noise’ which appears at its input, by a factor equal to its common-mode rejection ratio, (normally over 1000:1). A 'fully-balanced' circuit has a common-mode rejection ratio of precisely zero, since all signal, common-mode or not, is simply amplified and passed along via the two signal paths. It then remains up to the following component to attempt to reject that amplified noise, if it has a differential amplifier. 
 
Thus, fully-balanced circuitry is subject to passing along any noise which might be picked up on all the cables. Then it hits the final component in the system, usually the power amp, where the differential amplifier at its input is left to deal with the sum total of the common mode noise in the signal path, (multiplied by all the gain in the system).       I don't think this is an ideal scenario. If each component, (source, preamp, electronic crossover, power amp), had its own differential amplifier input, it would cancel any common-mode noise which appeared ahead of it, rather than amplifying it.  
 
 

james
 
Jun 25, 2015 at 8:30 AM Post #1,604 of 2,450
james tanner said:
  Hi Folks,
 
I wrote this a while ago but it may help.
 

Is Your System Out Of Balance?​
 
One question which keeps coming up over and over is the controversy regarding audio components being "fully balanced" versus what is sometimes referred to as "balanced converting to single ended" at the input of the electronic component (preamp, electronic crossover, amplifier etc). The correct term for this balanced converting to single ended is more accurately referred to as "differential amplifier balancing" 
 
Popular mythology has seen fit to 'bless' the concept of 'fully-balanced' (meaning of course, two completely separate signal paths through a component, with its attendant doubling of parts cost and complexity, and halving of reliability). This approach completely misses the point, which is, of course, to eliminate hum and noise picked up by the audio cables feeding the component. 
 
The reason for this is that a differential amplifier, and this is -REALLY IMPORTANT- ‘rejects any common-mode noise’ which appears at its input, by a factor equal to its common-mode rejection ratio, (normally over 1000:1). A 'fully-balanced' circuit has a common-mode rejection ratio of precisely zero, since all signal, common-mode or not, is simply amplified and passed along via the two signal paths. It then remains up to the following component to attempt to reject that amplified noise, if it has a differential amplifier. 
 
Thus, fully-balanced circuitry is subject to passing along any noise which might be picked up on all the cables. Then it hits the final component in the system, usually the power amp, where the differential amplifier at its input is left to deal with the sum total of the common mode noise in the signal path, (multiplied by all the gain in the system).       I don't think this is an ideal scenario. If each component, (source, preamp, electronic crossover, power amp), had its own differential amplifier input, it would cancel any common-mode noise which appeared ahead of it, rather than amplifying it.  
 
 

james
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Huh, that's very interesting. As I've said previously, this BHA-1 is drop dead silent even maxed out on high gain, so I'm tempted to agree with you. Clearly it is a recipe that works :p
 
Thank you sir.
 
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