What are balanced headphones?
Aug 22, 2016 at 10:25 PM Post #16 of 21
spaceresearcher said:
So please do correct me if I am mistaken, but if your not getting interference with a standard 3 cable system and have a decent cable with decent shared ground, then you will notice no difference at all?
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The better the system, the less interference there is, but EMI is ALWAYS there. On a good system, it's SUPER low-level. So low you can't actively identify it with your ears. On this level, you only know it was there when its gone. It's absence is far more noticeable than it's presence. The perfect example of "Ignorance is Bliss".

Balanced clears the signal up even more, and it's marvelous to behold. I remember thinking my AK120ii>Angie was too clear. Unnaturally clear. Five minutes later, I was hooked for life.
 
Mar 8, 2017 at 6:07 PM Post #17 of 21
lamode said:
  Balanced cables make sense if you are recording an event with long cables from the microphones to the mixing desk. You don't want interference picked up by the long stretch of cable being added to the small microphone signal. But in a headphone, it's overkill. It's a solution for a problem which doesn't exist. When was the last time you picked up audible electrical interference on your headphone cable?
 
On the other hand, separating the ground lines for both channels makes sense and means just using 4 wires instead of 3 in the headphone cable. That does make some sense given how little the price difference is, and prevents a little crosstalk. But this is not the same as a proper balanced setup with inverted signals coming from a balanced amp.
 
p.s. some people like to use independent cables to each driver in a multi-driver speaker, eliminating the shared length of cable between the amplifier and the crossover. This is the same principle as using independent ground lines in headphones.
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This is my thought EXACTLY.  You can't truly have balanced headphones because the cold isn't being flipped at the driver.  The receiving end of the balanced signal isn't flipping the phase back to + on the cold line and combining it with the hot to eliminate line interference, and also any interference in the line would be tiny compared to how strong the signal is.  Also, headphone cables tend to be so short that this is never a problem (and signal much stronger than a mic signal)
 
Mar 8, 2017 at 6:30 PM Post #18 of 21
Old thread I know, but figured I'd add:

"Balanced headphones" is a bit of a misnomer - it has nothing (whatsoever) to do with common-mode noise rejection as you'd see with "balanced cabling." Instead, it simply has to do with differential amplification - you have a + and a - leg from the amplifier, and the - leg is inverting, so you see greater voltage potential across the two points. It makes little to no sense with low impedance headphones (but that doesn't stop cable makers and tweaks companies from selling it to you), as they don't need that kind of voltage swing, but was mildly popular back when higher impedance headphones were more consistently associated with high end (e.g. the Sennheiser HD 650) where the extra voltage can have a more appreciable impact on their performance (it's made somewhat of a comeback with more power hungry cans of today, like the HE-6, as well). "Back in the day" amplifiers that provided this feature were usually two amplifiers hooked together, and ran two of their four output "sides" inverted (so you have Amplifier #1 Left/Right and Amplifier #2 Left/Right, and either Amplifier #2 is all inverted, or both "Right" (or "Left") sides are inverted and fed the same signal, so you'd get 1Left/1Right as Channel Left +/-, and so on). The NuForce HA200 is a modern example of this kind of design, where it can run as a stereo amplifier by itself, or take a balanced (as in "balanced cabling") input and use one of its output sides as the inverted leg, and provide mono balanced drive (so you buy a second one to get stereo).

I have no idea why the original creators (HeadRoom) decided to call it "balanced" instead of "differential" but they did, and it stuck. It's also inspired many more recent headphone designers to go with 4 (or some multiple thereof (e.g. 8)) conductor cables, for "internally balanced wiring." So you'll have two + and two - (which are then joined together as common at the jack) going up to the earcups. Probably from the same marketing world as putting "name brand" cable inside of speaker cabinets - it doesn't do anything, but it may help sales, and the cost difference is minor, so why fight the prevailing winds?
 
Jan 23, 2018 at 9:47 AM Post #19 of 21
Please kindy advance if there is any SQ or SPL difference between a connection of my non balanced fidelio X2 cans to a 2.5mm balanced output of a balanced DAC via a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter and a direct connection of my X2 to the non balanced output from the 3.5 out of the dac? The output voltage of the balanced amp of each channel is double of those 3.5 output.

Thanks
 
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