[Kejusan]

Balanced or unbalanced refers to the audio signal connections and circuitry of the dap/amp, the iem/headphones themselves have nothing to do with it, there's no such as thing as balanced or unbalanced iems

Any headphone can be balanced or single ended, it all depends on the cable. Single ended runs 3 wires from the source to the headphone (L+, R+ and common ground), balanced runs 4 wires (L+, L-, R+ and R-). Using the suggested adaptor will join the two minus signals to common ground and might short the source or produce strange or no sound

Thanks. These confirms my understanding before I bought this balanced cable to fit with my iem. I guess I have to take more listening hours from the balanced cable before I can conclude.

 

[Kejusan]

However, from my memory, the detail retrieval of balanced on 1A/Z is just as good if not better than SE right out the gate and the biggest improvements going balanced are soundstage (both depth and width) and more precise imaging. Frequency/tonal balance is the same so it shouldn't sound any darker/warmer.

I do noticed that the soundstage was better. Now I wonder if the improvement in soundstage gave me a perception of a 'darker' signature. Got to switch back and give the cables few listening hours for that.

 

[Amber Rain]

Any headphone can be balanced or single ended

Not quite true. There are many headphones that don't have the required internal wiring to use a balanced cable (often those with a single exit / cable input)

 

[nc8000]

Not quite true. There are many headphones that don't have the required internal wiring to use a balanced cable (often those with a single exit / cable input)

They can still be made balanced, it just requires more effort and not just a replacement cable. Same goes for any hard wired phone

 

[gerelmx1986]

They can still be made balanced, it just requires more effort and not just a replacement cable. Same goes for any hard wired phone

Ive wanted to kid my porta pros to have mmcx detachable sockets. But with my visual acuity of only 10% doesn't help

 

[nc8000]

Ive wanted to kid my porta pros to have mmcx detachable sockets. But with my visual acuity of only 10% doesn't help

No and I have no skills so in the past I’ve paid people with skills to do it

 

[kdphan]

I couldn't get this setup working on the 1Z for some reason.

Mac USB out to 1Z as DAC > 1Z single end output to KSE1200 amp.

1Z single end output to KSE1200 works just fine when not in DAC mode.

 

[MrWalkman]

I couldn't get this setup working on the 1Z for some reason.

Mac USB out to 1Z as DAC > 1Z single end output to KSE1200 amp.

1Z single end output to KSE1200 works just fine when not in DAC mode.

I think you can go in Sound Mixer and change the output settings. If my memory serves me well, you should choose 32 bit float(?).

Anyway, go to Sound Mixer and try different output settings for the USB DAC mode device that you can see there.

I had a Macbook for a while, and I had the same issue as you, that there was no sound output to the 1A, but I made it work eventually.

 

[kdphan]

I think you can go in Sound Mixer and change the output settings. If my memory serves me well, you should choose 32 bit float(?).

Anyway, go to Sound Mixer and try different output settings for the USB DAC mode device that you can see there.

I had a Macbook for a while, and I had the same issue as you, that there was no sound output to the 1A, but I made it work eventually.

Tried again...
got it to work

Thanks!

 

[Kejusan]

I do noticed that the soundstage was better. Now I wonder if the improvement in soundstage gave me a perception of a 'darker' signature. Got to switch back and give the cables few listening hours for that.

I'm back to using the original cable with 3.5mm port. My verdict for the high purity copper cable listened through 4.4mm port is based on the song in attached picture. This is one of the songs that made me knew that I've made a good purchase with the 1A. She plays acoustic/alternative dark folk (https://emmaruthrundle.bandcamp.com) :
1. It smoothen the overall song, making it less harsh (although the original cable doesn't sounds harsh to me) especially in the treble.
2. The bass rumble is reduced.
3. The strumming/plucking of the acoustic guitar seems less natural to me due to the slightly smooth overall sound.
4. The detailing and soundstage is better and I could heard sound (faint but audible) I haven't heard before from the 3.5mm port although not particularly from this song.

In short I could describe it like wearing a polarized sunglass whereby while it does gets darker, it also reduce glare making us able to see some detail which we couldn't see before. Having said that, I prefer the 'harshness', despite its' negative connotation. So I'm sticking to the 3.5mm port for now.

So if I want to utilize the balanced port, should I go for pure silver cable or copper with silver plating?

 

[Lookout57]

I'm back to using the original cable with 3.5mm port. My verdict for the high purity copper cable listened through 4.4mm port is based on the song in attached picture. This is one of the songs that made me knew that I've made a good purchase with the 1A. She plays acoustic/alternative dark folk (https://emmaruthrundle.bandcamp.com) :
1. It smoothen the overall song, making it less harsh (although the original cable doesn't sounds harsh to me) especially in the treble.
2. The bass rumble is reduced.
3. The strumming/plucking of the acoustic guitar seems less natural to me due to the slightly smooth overall sound.
4. The detailing and soundstage is better and I could heard sound (faint but audible) I haven't heard before from the 3.5mm port although not particularly from this song.

In short I could describe it like wearing a polarized sunglass whereby while it does gets darker, it also reduce glare making us able to see some detail which we couldn't see before. Having said that, I prefer the 'harshness', despite its' negative connotation. So I'm sticking to the 3.5mm port for now.

So if I want to utilize the balanced port, should I go for pure silver cable or copper with silver plating?

Pure OCC silver will give the best sound. Deep detailed bass, wide soundstage and velvety smooth highs when using MrWalkman's DMP-WM1 FE firmware.

 

[Redcarmoose]

I'm back to using the original cable with 3.5mm port. My verdict for the high purity copper cable listened through 4.4mm port is based on the song in attached picture. This is one of the songs that made me knew that I've made a good purchase with the 1A. She plays acoustic/alternative dark folk (https://emmaruthrundle.bandcamp.com) :
1. It smoothen the overall song, making it less harsh (although the original cable doesn't sounds harsh to me) especially in the treble.
2. The bass rumble is reduced.
3. The strumming/plucking of the acoustic guitar seems less natural to me due to the slightly smooth overall sound.
4. The detailing and soundstage is better and I could heard sound (faint but audible) I haven't heard before from the 3.5mm port although not particularly from this song.

In short I could describe it like wearing a polarized sunglass whereby while it does gets darker, it also reduce glare making us able to see some detail which we couldn't see before. Having said that, I prefer the 'harshness', despite its' negative connotation. So I'm sticking to the 3.5mm port for now.

So if I want to utilize the balanced port, should I go for pure silver cable or copper with silver plating?

Cables and tips are always a long and somehow convoluted experience. Meaning as far as sound modification goes, IEM tips will often offer more ways to change the sound......than just cables. Much of this process seems to be both learning to hear the changes and the effects of expectation bias, which means you psychologically hear what you expect to hear.

But the way many view cables is adding to the synergy goals at hand. There is not one best cable but a best cable for a situation. After reading threads since 2006 here I started to just respect what people wrote as far as cables. There is this giant giant cable thread where just like the high profile reviewers out there.........who go and list and rank headphones........he listed and ranked cables. And the thread starts out with him expanding-on how he chooses the cable first for the genre of music and chooses the IEM second. So amazingly in his mind the cable personality takes to the top level over the IEM choice.

The ways I have found it to work is in corrections. Meaning a dark IEM can have the frequency moved slightly brighter or darker with tips........but also with cables. So if you were looking for both soundstage and imaging and brightness they all can walk hand and hand. Changes happen with a medium bore tip that is short so the end of the IEM nozzle is not too far back and a SPC cable......the SPC cable into the Walkman 4.4mm and it’s even slightly more intense. That set-up may reduce bass and push mids and treble up. As well as stuff will be “decompressed” out into the soundstage. The imaging will allow the elements to open expand and gain in size from being a pin-point before.

Going with copper will at times smooth out the treble and add warmth. Also if you really concentrate you may find slightly different imaging with copper. So all this makes sense right as besides tips it’s the frequency which is positioning stuff inside the head-stage. Why is it that cymbals are directed out and up? They were not put there by the producers of the music. That positioning is due to the phenomenon of hearing with IEMs and it’s related to the frequency balance at hand.

Thus change the frequency and change the positioning. That’s the subtle part of how cables work. Also that’s why people feel there is better detail with bright material cables. The brighter aspects then bring treble and midrange responses out forward..........they then spread out in the soundstage, get better imaged and seem to have more detail because the display is better.

Take narrow bore tips and a darker cable and the midrange and treble will get diminished and the bass will seem more prominent. The main issue here is that every application is relative to only the grouping. Meaning it’s idiosyncrasies of the DAP, cables, tip and IEM.

Go and try to put a different cable and a mid-bore short tip on an IEM and the whole spectrum will change to where there could be a mid emphasis which you don’t want. Maybe the mid BA has a screeching quality that the narrow bore tips hide? So in that situation you could keep the copper cable and just change tips. But after that if you still didn’t like the sound you could change cables. These are all the things we do to avoid EQ, but positioning gets changed too. Also it’s looking at each piece of equipment as optimized potentials. Each piece of equipment has an intrinsic value in relation to our hearing and sound goals. All we are doing is driving the sound in one or two directions like driving a car. The end destinations we are driving to is the desired sound. Cables have been the bottom of my list of investments. I believe in them but I’m more curious about actual transducers. I maybe have $1000 in aftermarket cables. People who just get one IEM and one DAP keep trying different cables and finally find one cable that does what they want. There are super expensive gold silver cables too which are brighter. Cable length affects the impedance. Material affects the sound. And construction affects the sound. The 4.4mm and 3.5mm are different amps with different components. Each amp has a different sound. I have cable and IEM combos that are better in 3.5mm and most in 4.4mmm.

A while ago I went and found custom made pure silver interconnection RCA cables but they were too bright. That’s when I leaned about silver. So I use copper RCA cables. But as far as many Chinese IEM cables that they say are SPC.....I would be surprised how much silver could be in a $11 cable. It’s probably tin. If you search Head-Fi they have even researched this aspect where they took cheap cables apart and determined which ones were truly made of what. There is nothing wrong with using a $16 SPC cable if you like the sound and it helps you go to the place your trying to get to.

Cheers!

 

[Kejusan]

Pure OCC silver will give the best sound. Deep detailed bass, wide soundstage and velvety smooth highs when using MrWalkman's DMP-WM1 FE firmware.

Thanks! Will be sourcing the cable soon. I'm still in the process of establishing the baseline for my device and the fw mod will follow after the baseline has been establoshed, or at least that is the current plan.

Cables and tips are always a long and somehow convoluted experience. Meaning as far as sound modification goes, IEM tips will often offer more ways to change the sound......than just cables. Much of this process seems to be both learning to hear the changes and the effects of expectation bias, which means you psychologically hear what you expect to hear.

But the way many view cables is adding to the synergy goals at hand. There is not one best cable but a best cable for a situation. After reading threads since 2006 here I started to just respect what people wrote as far as cables. There is this giant giant cable thread where just like the high profile reviewers out there.........who go and list and rank headphones........he listed and ranked cables. And the thread starts out with him expanding-on how he chooses the cable first for the genre of music and chooses the IEM second. So amazingly in his mind the cable personality takes to the top level over the IEM choice.

The ways I have found it to work is in corrections. Meaning a dark IEM can have the frequency moved slightly brighter or darker with tips........but also with cables. So if you were looking for both soundstage and imaging and brightness they all can walk hand and hand. Changes happen with a medium bore tip that is short so the end of the IEM nozzle is not too far back and a SPC cable......the SPC cable into the Walkman 4.4mm and it’s even slightly more intense. That set-up may reduce bass and push mids and treble up. As well as stuff will be “decompressed” out into the soundstage. The imaging will allow the elements to open expand and gain in size from being a pin-point before.

Going with copper will at times smooth out the treble and add warmth. Also if you really concentrate you may find slightly different imaging with copper. So all this makes sense right as besides tips it’s the frequency which is positioning stuff inside the head-stage. Why is it that cymbals are directed out and up? They were not put there by the producers of the music. That positioning is due to the phenomenon of hearing with IEMs and it’s related to the frequency balance at hand.

Thus change the frequency and change the positioning. That’s the subtle part of how cables work. Also that’s why people feel there is better detail with bright material cables. The brighter aspects then bring treble and midrange responses out forward..........they then spread out in the soundstage, get better imaged and seem to have more detail because the display is better.

Take narrow bore tips and a darker cable and the midrange and treble will get diminished and the bass will seem more prominent. The main issue here is that every application is relative to only the grouping. Meaning it’s idiosyncrasies of the DAP, cables, tip and IEM.

Go and try to put a different cable and a mid-bore short tip on an IEM and the whole spectrum will change to where there could be a mid emphasis which you don’t want. Maybe the mid BA has a screeching quality that the narrow bore tips hide? So in that situation you could keep the copper cable and just change tips. But after that if you still didn’t like the sound you could change cables. These are all the things we do to avoid EQ, but positioning gets changed too. Also it’s looking at each piece of equipment as optimized potentials. Each piece of equipment has an intrinsic value in relation to our hearing and sound goals. All we are doing is driving the sound in one or two directions like driving a car. The end destinations we are driving to is the desired sound. Cables have been the bottom of my list of investments. I believe in them but I’m more curious about actual transducers. I maybe have $1000 in aftermarket cables. People who just get one IEM and one DAP keep trying different cables and finally find one cable that does what they want. There are super expensive gold silver cables too which are brighter. Cable length affects the impedance. Material affects the sound. And construction affects the sound. The 4.4mm and 3.5mm are different amps with different components. Each amp has a different sound. I have cable and IEM combos that are better in 3.5mm and most in 4.4mmm.

A while ago I went and found custom made pure silver interconnection RCA cables but they were too bright. That’s when I leaned about silver. So I use copper RCA cables. But as far as many Chinese IEM cables that they say are SPC.....I would be surprised how much silver could be in a $11 cable. It’s probably tin. If you search Head-Fi they have even researched this aspect where they took cheap cables apart and determined which ones were truly made of what. There is nothing wrong with using a $16 SPC cable if you like the sound and it helps you go to the place your trying to get to.

Cheers!

I've read some of the threads here about tips and cables but not enthusiastically. Honestly, I'm suprised that the change in cables affect my hearing this much and I bought the cable just looking for the cheapest with a reasonable quality for me to utilize the balanced port. I am (or was?) from the school of thought that cables does not affect sound that much, at least not to my hearing and this was concluded through my experience with analogue hifi setup. I've changed my speaker cables couples of time and no difference was detected to my ears. But come to think about it, speaker has one thing that IEM doesn't; the room acoustic. So the room acoustic (which is not good in my case) might be the reason I'm not hearing any audible improvement from switching to better cables previously for speaker setup.

As for the tips, I do find the difference in the sound particularly with the foam tips. I do agree that the foam tips provide a better insulation and improve bass but then again it seems to me that it has deminished some of the treble extensions, and I don't realize this before, since I'm only into head-fi quite recently, but I like my treble more than I like my bass so no foam tips, at least not with my current setup.

 

[Redcarmoose]

Thanks! Will be sourcing the cable soon. I'm still in the process of establishing the baseline for my device and the fw mod will follow after the baseline has been establoshed, or at least that is the current plan.

I've read some of the threads here about tips and cables but not enthusiastically. Honestly, I'm suprised that the change in cables affect my hearing this much and I bought the cable just looking for the cheapest with a reasonable quality for me to utilize the balanced port. I am (or was?) from the school of thought that cables does not affect sound that much, at least not to my hearing and this was concluded through my experience with analogue hifi setup. I've changed my speaker cables couples of time and no difference was detected to my ears. But come to think about it, speaker has one thing that IEM doesn't; the room acoustic. So the room acoustic (which is not good in my case) might be the reason I'm not hearing any audible improvement from switching to better cables previously for speaker setup.

As for the tips, I do find the difference in the sound particularly with the foam tips. I do agree that the foam tips provide a better insulation and improve bass but then again it seems to me that it has deminished some of the treble extensions, and I don't realize this before, since I'm only into head-fi quite recently, but I like my treble more than I like my bass so no foam tips, at least not with my current setup.

Right, well obviously the whole cable debate is contraversal, some notice, some don’t.

Cheers!

Glad you like your player!

 

[ttt123]

Thanks! Will be sourcing the cable soon. I'm still in the process of establishing the baseline for my device and the fw mod will follow after the baseline has been establoshed, or at least that is the current plan.

I've read some of the threads here about tips and cables but not enthusiastically. Honestly, I'm suprised that the change in cables affect my hearing this much and I bought the cable just looking for the cheapest with a reasonable quality for me to utilize the balanced port. I am (or was?) from the school of thought that cables does not affect sound that much, at least not to my hearing and this was concluded through my experience with analogue hifi setup. I've changed my speaker cables couples of time and no difference was detected to my ears. But come to think about it, speaker has one thing that IEM doesn't; the room acoustic. So the room acoustic (which is not good in my case) might be the reason I'm not hearing any audible improvement from switching to better cables previously for speaker setup.

As for the tips, I do find the difference in the sound particularly with the foam tips. I do agree that the foam tips provide a better insulation and improve bass but then again it seems to me that it has deminished some of the treble extensions, and I don't realize this before, since I'm only into head-fi quite recently, but I like my treble more than I like my bass so no foam tips, at least not with my current setup.

Cable differences depend on system synergy/components, and setup, both in home audio, and portable audio, is what I found. A weak link anywhere in the system can easily mask out, or null the changes in micro detail that a cable can improve on.

So when people do not hear any difference, in their system, that is true. Just as other people do hear a difference, that is also true. It can be due to a system difference, or even that the particular ears/brain are not able to hear it.

It's like how an oenophile (wine expert) will detect differences in wine that the person (like me) who does not pay attention to wine will not. The difference is there, just that I have not been experienced/learned to detect it.