Anyone running a "balanced" setup? I don't understand the advantage

[alfa147x]

Hmm. I'm still not very happy with my HD650. They are nice but no where near how nice my Grado SR325is sound.

 

[Born2bwire]

Hmm. I'm still not very happy with my HD650. They are nice but no where near how nice my Grado SR325is sound.

I always preferred the HD650s to the Grados, let the battle begin! I know I have a pair of Grados lying around too. The headphones I have now though are brighter than the HD650s, but I don't know what would be an alternative to the HD650s at a similar price point. Never did get around to listening to the HE-6s, but I was happy to sit down and listen to the Beyerdynamic T1. I had such a hard time finding them in Hong Kong. For the longest time shops wouldn't keep a demo unit in stock. I didn't think that they were so different from the HD800s as some people were making them out to be.

 

[MagickMan]

Mmmm... Been a long time since I listened to the Stax Omega II. Bah, reminds me I should give my system a spin tonight.

I really like my Stax, they're my babies. It's kinda strange listening to standard dynamic cans after getting used to stats, they sound so artificial.

Hmm. I'm still not very happy with my HD650. They are nice but no where near how nice my Grado SR325is sound.

You're more of a mid forward guy, you'd likely love the HE-6s. IMO, they're the greatest rock/metal cans ever made.

 

[Born2bwire]

I really like my Stax, they're my babies. It's kinda strange listening to standard dynamic cans after getting used to stats, they sound so artificial.

You're more of a mid forward guy, you'd likely love the HE-6s. IMO, they're the greatest rock/metal cans ever made.

Yeah, they've got a great sound. I never got into them because of the costs but the Omega II with one of Gilmore's Blue Hawaii amps was one of the best systems I ever heard. The entry level models compromise too much and the really good sets were way too expensive for me. I decided to keep with dynamics since there were far more options in terms of amps and cans. Course by now I've worked my way up to Omega II price levels.

 

[uhohs]

I started listening my hd650's again recently after having them boxed away for 2+ years, they're better than I remembered them. Probably because the Gilmore Lite or M^3 I'm using now is a much better match than whatever I was using back then.

 

[NutBucket]

You are ridiculous, as is your comparison. Try an ABX test of SS amps, and as long as they aren't defective they'll sound the same.

I don't have much to offer in terms of experience with headphones but in terms of my home listening systems there's a large difference between the various receivers I have which are all SS and are of various age ranging from 2 to 40 years.

As an electrical engineer I can tell you that yes, they are all functionally equivalent but there are lots of other factors including the transistors themselves. Topology is an obvious difference but lets not even consider that.

Besides, if they all sounded the same then why on earth are there so many companies making amplifiers..... Also, if you follow your own logic all DACs are the same too. They're functionally equivalent given the same speed/bit spec.

 

[MagickMan]

I don't have much to offer in terms of experience with headphones but in terms of my home listening systems there's a large difference between the various receivers I have which are all SS and are of various age ranging from 2 to 40 years.

As an electrical engineer I can tell you that yes, they are all functionally equivalent but there are lots of other factors including the transistors themselves. Topology is an obvious difference but lets not even consider that.

Besides, if they all sounded the same then why on earth are there so many companies making amplifiers..... Also, if you follow your own logic all DACs are the same too. They're functionally equivalent given the same speed/bit spec.

I already said that DACs are the same too. In ABX testing, as long as there's nothing wrong with the amp, SS amps will sound the same. If there is a difference of note it's due to selective perception bias, which is all too common in the HiFi world.

So many companies make amps because people buy them, and they buy them because they want to believe that spending substantially more money gives them better sound quality. The reality is, it doesn't. As long as the load is within the amplifier's capability and it isn't clipping, the sound from the speaker or headphone will be the same.

I bought the Benchmark because of its great build quality and it has the features I want, plus it was sold at a substantial discount.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I don't have much to offer in terms of experience with headphones but in terms of my home listening systems there's a large difference between the various receivers I have which are all SS and are of various age ranging from 2 to 40 years.

As an electrical engineer I can tell you that yes, they are all functionally equivalent but there are lots of other factors including the transistors themselves. Topology is an obvious difference but lets not even consider that.

Besides, if they all sounded the same then why on earth are there so many companies making amplifiers..... Also, if you follow your own logic all DACs are the same too. They're functionally equivalent given the same speed/bit spec.

I don't agree that they all sound the same because as we're finding out, plenty of the people making them don't know what they're doing and are doing stuff that actually harms the sound. Competently designed amps I think would likely sound very similar, very possibly would sound the same within the range of human hearing, but I don't know how many products that's even true of. Very few of the boutique products it seems.

Because people are not actually measuring them. Not to mention comparing them in different circumstances or based on memory or any number of other things that skew their findings.

You make a mistake by saying that your amps are functionally the same, which they almost certainly aren't, unless you've somehow managed to get a variety of them that have the same measured output and are at similar levels of duress (i.e. clean, which is of more significance for older ones). It actually doesn't need to be the same, they just need to all effectively have the same headroom such that whatever volume levels you're comparing them at, they are not running into issues with being able to provide the necessary output.

The reality is that not all amps are competently designed (and by that I mean measure such that they have no glaring fault that would be audible), and plenty of these companies often even tout "voicing" them or "engineering them by ear". Or at least a lot of the headphone amp makers do. Stuff like output impedance issues are actually ridiculously common in headphone amps, and even intended plenty of the time, and that alone can greatly impact the results you get.

Even if they do sound the same, people want/expect them to sound different and so will convince themselves that they do.

Well, that's actually true. In fact, I'd say DACs are more likely to sound the same than amps. Of course there are things that can skew comparisons between DACs, so you'd want to take extra care to remove all other factors (so you'd want same amp/speakers/measured volume/recording/etc).

 

[MagickMan]

I had said "as long as there's nothing wrong with the amp", but you're right. There's a great deal wrong with lot of boutique amps.

 

[NutBucket]

Well, I've clearly wandered down the path of a useless argument. Anyway, my final thought on this threadjack is that I wasn't even talking about boutique amps. In fact, my only experience is with mainstream consumer brands; Kenwood, Pioneer, Sansui, Nikko, etc. (yes, obviously some of those don't exist anymore)