Which headphones of Drop's currently available?
I have some rewards points to burn but there's no obviously good options on Drop right now for headphones Contenders Ultrasone - maybe? I don't own any Ultrasones, so curious. Looks like garbage travel headphone which could be useful also. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. - Maybe? I have the DT 880 Good price point, really uncomfortable headphones but could be interesting to try the upgraded version. E-MU - strong contender but $400 is a bad price point for what it is. Which of the above would you choose and why? Nothing else on Drop is relevant to my interests, because Already own 6xx 820 800 s Ether cx Garbage / Consumer grade Meze 99 - garbage bass canons, hard pass No gaming headphones obviously Sennheiser wireless - no to wireless/bluetooth Hifiman - I have 2 of drop hifimans and they make really bad cheap shit on Drop, hard pass on HE-R7DX Aeon - I own the closed, Drop refuses to address #padgate so no reason to buy open Beyerdynamic 177x - wireless, nope Too similar 8x / 560s...
Mar 28, 2024
- You have a lengthy cable run and you want to minimize the amount of induced interference between two connected devices
- And/or your device with the balanced output is a truly differential design; meaning it has two discrete circuits for each channel (non-inverted and inverted).
With the latter you gain 3 dB better dynamic range, but the costs of designing and manufacturing rise up pretty quickly. And this works best in situations, where your whole audio chain is truly balanced. As Airist R-2R Dac is a cheap device (considering it has already a "proprietary" discrete design consisting of many individual components), it would be economically challenging to offer a truly differential design at this price. Then there are of course other reasons why you "need" a balanced output; maybe your active speakers or amplifier has a balanced input. Maybe it is even the only input it has! Then, it becomes a matter of convenience instead of using an active balancer or an RCA-XLR cable (wherever that is possible). But either way, we do not know it until you tell us.