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Invest in Balancing my HD6xx headphones?

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Hi... I'm a songwriter/producer. I have Drop Senn HD6xx HPs. I just bought a Topping L30 II SE HP amp to enhance my monitoring. It honestly sounds pretty good. The audio interface I'm using (an Audient iD22) has balanced outs. For those of you who've listened to the HD6xx using balanced amps and cables, do you think I should invest in that kind of setup to take advantage of the Senns potential?
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Depends… what is the best sounding output on your amp? Amplifiers that have both balanced and the more common 1/4” or 1/8” single-ended output (SE) tend to output more power from the balanced output… but unless the regular headphone out jack sounds too quiet or has anemic impact, there’s usually more than enough power for the HD 6XX on most dedicated amps. Amps that only have SE outputs can easily be designed to offer way more power than the HD 6XX needs. So really, it just comes down to which output has lower distortion and overall better sound quality. If you had two different amps that are theoretically equal in power, parts selection, and design apart from one being balanced and the other being the more conventional SE, the balanced amp would probably have less crosstalk but the SE would have lower total harmonic distortion and cost less, and the perceived sound would be similar 🤷‍♂️ But again, with a few notable exceptions, amps that bother to have a balanced design are usually prioritized to sound best from their balanced output. So, in practice, the answer to your question is probably the balanced out would sound a little better, but that shouldn’t make you avoid a single ended amp in the future if you’re looking at upgrades. Personally, I got a balanced cable for my HD 600 series (it works for so many headphones! I have the HD 58X Jubilee, HD 650, HD 660S, and HD 660S2!), and a very short “ponytail” balanced to SE adapter so that I could use the nice cable with any amp (sometimes I’ll test out amps at trade shows and meets).
Cilvre
4
Feb 27, 2024
If the Senn's are driven well enough on their current setup, then you are likely fine. You could always pick up a balanced cable to test it out, but even when I ran them balanced vs normal cables, there wasn't much difference for them. When you have hard to drive headphones, balanced helps a bit more in terms of power to each side and getting better output.
dm94aq7
0
Feb 22, 2024
There is absolutely no benefit of balanced audio for a home setup. Even @JefH who runs this spam-infested shithole knows that.
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