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NaZul15 OP t1_iue01r9 wrote

Reply to comment by MrTubby1 in Question: what headphones can take balanced output? by NaZul15

It's a pretty great pair, sounds fairly similar to my akg k400, just less separation and soundstage, and more bass.

Bit more vshaped, but pretty close to the harman target, and a little warm. A bit boomy when i used it single ended, but it got a lot better when i used it balanced. Idk why either, but it's definitely not placebo. Volume isn't a problem bc it's only 16 ohms.

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ElectronicVices t1_iue1t9y wrote

Certain devices may favor one output over the other, it doesn't make the "balanced" headphone output universally "better". Let me use the Cayin iHA-6 and your Sony as an example... via the trs (SE) output they would see a 10 ohm output impedance to a 16 ohm nominal headphone, this is an impedance matching issue. Assuming the Sonys are like most dynamic headphones there will be a rise in impedance near the reasonance frequency of the driver... in the bass region... that gets boosted when fed a high output impedance.

Via either the dual 3 pin XLR or 4 pin XLR that same Cayin has a .3 ohm output impedance which would NOT result in any measurable FR changes. Headphones below 80 ohms are best ran via these "balanced outputs", above that threshold there are minimal differences between the two on that device.

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NaZul15 OP t1_iue2ezn wrote

Interesting. Does that mean higher impedance headphones don't have this problem as much?

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ElectronicVices t1_iue2j04 wrote

I was in the process of a quick edit, see above now.

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NaZul15 OP t1_iue2yb4 wrote

Good to know, thank you. I knew it wasn't placebo, but i'm not surprised by these skeptical audiophiles, bc there's a lot of snake oil in this community.

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ElectronicVices t1_iue68o6 wrote

That particular amp allows you to take impedance matching a bit further... one of the TRS jacks is 120 ohm output impedance, only really useful with HD800, T1 Gen 1, etc... but can be fun to experiment with.

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