[joze7205]

Curious about how my HD600 would sound in a balanced setup would sound I bought a HD650 cable and terminated it with two TRS-plugs. Then I plugged them into the cue output of my Presonus Central Station (there is a volume pot for the cue output) .

Compared to the regular amp, the bass is noticable weaker and less boomy (or perhaps tighter - I'm not sure of which it is). Using the regular amp in the CS, I found that the HD600 had more bass than my K701. Now, they have the same amount of bass (perhaps the K701 has even more). I also have the impression the there is slight rolloff in the treble. The midrange is about the same and so is the soundstage. Compairing the knob positions, the gain is about the same with the headphone out vs the cue out. I'm not sure which way I prefer the HD600 (balanced vs SE from the CS), both are quite good - just different.


1) I don't know much about the internals of the Presonus CS, perhaps I am also compairing two different amps here. Has anyone compaired this setup with a dedicated balanced amp?

2) Has anyone tried this with other cans?

3) I don't want to mod my K701 into a balanced pair yet. Do you think doing so will it make the bass on the K701 weaker?

 

[dkjohnso]

I would guess the bass is weaker because those outputs are not meant for driving headphones. From the Presonus website: "In addition, the Central Station includes a set of CUE outputs that can feed headphone amplifiers..." Those outputs just don't have enough power to drive the high-impedance HD600's.

 

[GreatDane]

I tried this with my HD 650. I've never seriously tried to compare the 2 outputs because that involves changing cables which takes more time that I'd like.

The balanced output gets plenty loud for me.