rdmorris
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2008
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what is balanced and what are the advantages and disadvantages?
Balanced Headphones A typical headphone plug has three connection points: left, right, and ground. The speaker driver in each earpiece gets either the left or right drive signal delivered to one of its terminals and the ground on the other terminal. This is called a "single-ended" drive scheme when one terminal is connected to drive and the other is grounded. But there is another superior way to power headphones and that is to drive both terminals of the headphone simultaneously, one side with the 'normal' drive signal and the other side with an identically inverted drive signal. This is called a "balanced drive" scheme. 'Phones of this type require a special balanced headphone amplifier and special headphone cabling terminated to XLR 3-pin connectors. The simply huge, huge advantage of this type of drive signal is that it generates twice the effective slew rate and output power for a given signal amplitude AND the left/right earpieces are not sharing a common ground that can cause signal crosstalk, muddy detail resolution, pinched dynamics, high background noise floor issues (like hiss & hum) -- among other nasty-sounding things! The principal sonic gain of these high-end balanced headphone systems is the MUCH more liquid, deep-sounding, and precisely clear soundstage image available on balanced-terminated headphones. |
Originally Posted by whaleyboy /img/forum/go_quote.gif One disadvantage is that there are fewer choices for balanced configurations. There are fewer amps and headphones generally have to be specially cabled to run in balanced mode. In addition, there are fewer balanced sources and the balanced options are *typically* more expensive. I personally have decided to stay with single ended or non balanced headphones as long as I am using dynamic headphones. That said, I have pretty much all balanced sources just in case I change my mind |
Originally Posted by vcoheda /img/forum/go_quote.gif advantages: better sound across the board. disadvantages: cost. |
Originally Posted by Nocturnal310 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Another disadvantage: Compatibility |