audioengr
Member of the Trade: Empirical Audio
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2004
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The output on my DAC designs is so much like a tube in SQ, that I started planning a headamp that is truly balanced based on the same design. It think it would be nice to have an alternative to good tubes, that is not tubes. I like tubes and even have tube SET monoblocks for my speakers, but it would still be nice and no maintenance.
I recently attended the LA Audio Show near LAX and at the canjam I discovered that there are evidently no truly balanced headamps out there, at least none that anyone was aware of. They are actually better described as "separated" than balanced. The ground returns are always connected together and there are signals driven on only two of the four wires.
I don't see any reason why a truly balanced headamp would not be possible. This would have + and - signals to each headphone. As long as the ground returns on each phone are not electrically connected to each other, a true balanced configuration should work.
Why would I want to do this? Primarily because the Class-A balanced output on my DAC is like this. Because I can scale up the power and drive up to 2 watts into Grados etc.. I can do twice the wattage with true balanced versus single-ended. Also, it will have some common-mode rejection, just like a fully balanced amp for speakers. It will burn about 15 watts in order to get 2 to each phone, but worth it. There will be heat-fins on the sides. Makes a small space heater too for winter time.
My father is also losing his hearing, so I want to get him a low-noise, low-distortion headphone amp to use with the TV and movies. He is using closed captioning now, but I think there is still hope.
Comments?
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
I recently attended the LA Audio Show near LAX and at the canjam I discovered that there are evidently no truly balanced headamps out there, at least none that anyone was aware of. They are actually better described as "separated" than balanced. The ground returns are always connected together and there are signals driven on only two of the four wires.
I don't see any reason why a truly balanced headamp would not be possible. This would have + and - signals to each headphone. As long as the ground returns on each phone are not electrically connected to each other, a true balanced configuration should work.
Why would I want to do this? Primarily because the Class-A balanced output on my DAC is like this. Because I can scale up the power and drive up to 2 watts into Grados etc.. I can do twice the wattage with true balanced versus single-ended. Also, it will have some common-mode rejection, just like a fully balanced amp for speakers. It will burn about 15 watts in order to get 2 to each phone, but worth it. There will be heat-fins on the sides. Makes a small space heater too for winter time.
My father is also losing his hearing, so I want to get him a low-noise, low-distortion headphone amp to use with the TV and movies. He is using closed captioning now, but I think there is still hope.
Comments?
Steve N.
Empirical Audio
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