You won't.
The use of the term "balanced" is a permanent source of confusion.
A balanced connection as common in the pro-world is a 3 wire connection using a 3 pin XLR or a TRS jack.
It is used to connect DAC's, amps, active speakers, etc. at line level.
The 3 wires carry a hot, a cold (the inverse of the hot) and a ground.
At the receiver there is a differential amp comparing the hot and the cold and removing all common noise.
In a studio environment with tons of gear and long cable runs, balanced is a must.
At home you might wonder if you really need it.
If you don't have noise issues using RCA, you might as well stick to the RCA.
A "balanced" connection in the headphone world means something completely different.
It is a 4 wire connection, L+/L- and R+/R- between the amp and the headphone.
Nothing "balanced" about this symmetrical connection but as L and R no longer have a common ground, it allow for amplifier topologies with a floating ground like indeed a balanced amp. That is why this double single ended connection is called "balanced" in the headphone world. It is simply 2 times a single ended connection just like connecting speakers to an amp.
In general, as they are using 2 amps per channel instead of 1.
- more power
- more distortion (the sum of both amps) but fortunately today's amps have an extremely low distortion hence it might simply be not audible
- higher impedance but again doubling a very low impedance might be inaudible.
Focus in on the comments that talked about GROUND. That's the primary benefit of balanced connections.
The real key is in the highlighted text that Roseval wrote. Every time someone in the headphone world says, "balanced," they really mean differential. A differential amp uses two truly separate amplifiers per channel, for a total of 4 amplifiers for a stereo signal. Each channel is split into its differential components, amplified separately, then combined. If your music string is truly differential from source to driver, then the final connection of the differential components never occurs until arriving at the driver. If not, then somewhere there are not differential components and the music string is not "pure" differential.
In the "Pro world," as Roseval explains, "balanced" is a term used for the connections and cabling between components. There is a noted mfr in the headphone world, who will claim to his dying breath that his equipment is "balanced," simply because it uses balanced connections. If it's an amplifier, it may very well be single-ended on the inside, have balanced connections on the input and output and this mfr (who shall go nameless) will call the entire amplifier balanced.
That is what makes the "balanced" discussion confusing in the headphone world. I guess we can blame Tyll Hertsens for some of this, because he originated the use of fully differential amplifiers for headphone use and called them "balanced." I think it was easier to market his amps that way and the term stuck. However, it's proper to call the amplifier "fully differential," instead.
It's notable that fully differential circuitry with separately grounded outputs in an amplifier can give you most of the benefit of fully differential, whether the entire amp is "pure" differential or not. The real reason is that common mode distortion is cancelled in fully differential circuitry. Common mode distortion occurs in the active parts of a circuit and through interference, among other things. Reducing this noise has a very real effect in headphone listening because the signals are so small and the resolution of detail is so great. I believe this is the primary reason for fully differential amps "sounding better" with headphones.
In fact, build an amp that's totally differential on the inside, use single-ended inputs and outputs, but with balanced connectors (to get the grounding benefit), and you have 99.99% of the benefit of so-called "pure," fully differential operation. In the case of tube amplifiers, this is really what you want to do, because it's not the safest thing to do to connect to fully differential, high-voltage outputs with the traditional means of DC-blocking.
The improvement in S/N ratio of using balanced cables (instead of single-ended cable) on a single-ended amp is dwarfed by the improvement of using a fully balanced amp, with balanced inputs, and balanced cables to the headphone. This is evidenced by the specifications I posted above for the Schiit Magnius balanced headphone amp above.
Your claim that the improvement in S/N ration using balanced cables on a SE amp is audible, and I don't agree that it is always true (or even usually true) that the difference is audible. It depends on a lot of factors, such as cable quality, length, possible interference with other electrical signals, etc.
I agree that most of your other comments are a "nit" unless one is audio/electrical engineer, rather than just an audiophile trying to make some basic decisions about equipment and cables.
Hello everyone.
I don't mean to Necropost, but I came across this thread when I found myself wondering the exact same thing as OP, and your responses have all been very helpful. I have tried my best to read through the entire thread and all of your comments, but I was hoping I could ask you a more pointed question.
My understanding, based on Roseval and Tomb's great posts, is that the term "Balanced" is fraught with confusion, because of the differences in how the word is used in the professional audio world, and the consumer audiophile world. In the former, it's about cables, inverted signals, and noise cancellation. In the latter, it's about amplification architecture -- specifically, a
wholistic amplification architecture, where the DAC, Amp, Cables, AND headphones all have to be built in a balanced way, to actually reap any benefits.
This is the limit of my understanding, though, so I want to ask you whether a
specific amp and headphone pairing would be a fully balanced system or not.
I'm looking at getting the Sennheiser HD800s, and the Schiit Audio Jotunheim 2 Amp, with a DAC card.
https://www.schiit.com/products/jotunheim-1
Does this combination of headphones + dac + amp equal a fully balanced system? I personally see two possible problem-points:
1) The Sennheiser's "Balanced" cable is a 4mm jack, which, if I understand correctly, is not ACTUALLY a true, balanced cable. ONLY XLR is. However, there are aftermarket XLR cables for the Senn's that I can buy, or I can mod my own XLR cables.
2) Even if the Jotunheim's amp architecture is truly fully balanced, what about the DAC? I have the option to buy a "True Multibit" DAC card, or a ES9028 DAC. I've also been trying to read up on what the heck a Multibit DAC is, and it seems like it's just Schiit's name for a much older, resistor-ladder-based DAC architecture, which has since been developped to compete with modern transistor DAC's, but might just be a case of snake oil? IDK. In any case, would either of these DAC options be balanced, too?
For roughly the same money (actually, a bit less), I could instead go with the Midgard Balanced Amp, and the Modius DAC... would THESE be a fully-balanced setup?
I am very confused. Would appreciate any help you all can offer. Thank you!