Toronto-Will t1_iue5tqg wrote on October 30, 2022 at 5:25 PM

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

If there's a headphone you're interested in, it'll be obvious if it has two cables going to each cup, and if it is one cable, then a modest amount of searching for the "replacement cable" will identify whether it is a TRRS. Z Reviews on YouTube also always talks about the cables as one of the first points of the review.

Balanced/unbalanced is a silly thing to search for as your very first consideration. Start with budget, tonality, staging, portability, or even aesthetics. All balanced cabling does is give you some extra power connected to a balanced output. Almost any device with a balanced output would have to be an enthusiast-oriented DAC/amp, which probably outputs a lot of power even on the unbalanced output. On the other side of the equation, only a handful of headphones are so power thirsty that you'd see any benefit from extra power. The one exception I'd make is if you're planning to use over-ear headphones (rather than IEMs) with a portable bluetooth device like the Qudelix. The portable devices don't have an overwhelming amount of power, and the balanced output on those can actually be useful. It's a different story with desktop dac/amps, they'll have no problem powering just about anything.

NaZul15 OP t1_iuea69z wrote on October 30, 2022 at 5:54 PM

Good idea about looking for replacement cables.

As to having a good single ended pair, i've got the akg k400, which runs perfectly fine in the 3.5mm jack.

Apparently output impedence also has effect on low impedence headphones:

> 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.

Toronto-Will t1_iueb6t7 wrote on October 30, 2022 at 6:00 PM

I think a 10 ohm output impedance is high for a headphone amp, but in any event I wouldn’t worry about it, it’s ultimately still an issue of power, and it’s unlikely you’re going to be short on power. Try to find a headphone that’s comfortable and sounds good to you, rather than mathing out a headphone that can draw the most wattage from your amp.