Really impressed with this. It's extremely clean, measures excellently, is very powerful and does everything you'd ever need or want a headphone amp to do (gain settings, balanced inputs, balanced output).
If you have VERY sensitive IEMs this might not be the best (12ohm or lower impedance), but if you have anything else, this is as good an amp as you will ever need to buy.
Buy this and stop spending money on headphone amps.
tiadThe XLR IS a balanced output... It has both SE(unbalanced)3.5 & 6.5 and a singular balanced XLR output.
If you are referring to rear output, then yes, you are correct that it only has coaxial unbalanced output for preamp. The unit isn't truly balanced anyway, although the XLR input IS fully differential, It has architectural implementations internally that keep it from being fully balanced which was a decision made by the engineer (Andrew Mason) as a cost/benefit calculation, but he clearly didn't think there was any value outside marketing.
Mason surmised: “The signal path internally is fully differential throughout (per Putzeys), but is NOT truly balanced in a few sections. We preserve the full signal integrity but we avoid increasing the retail price for no measurable benefit.”
I hope this clears it up!
Sm0ld3rYup well put.
Fully differential is important, but fully-balanced internally is not, as can be evidenced by this amp handily outperforming other, more expensive, fully-internally-balanced amps in measurements.