Understanding Balanced Audio 

Thanks Amir! Dude you are such a value in the HiFi world. Even if companies don't like you, consumers do! So happy you are on YT now.

*Excellent explanation* of 'balanced inputs, 'differential headphone output' and 'balanced topology'. I always wondered what those 4-pin connectors for headphones really were. My headphones get loud enough with no noticeable distortion, so I don't need differential headphone output. Thanks for doing this video, Amir. All the best, Rob

Your lectures are always worth listening to. Thanks ever so much.

Wow, I'm always amazed at how much I learn from each of your videos. Thank you!

when you stopped counting sunny days by amount of sun but the new video from Amir ;-)

Thank you! This was wonderfully informative and reaffirmed what I’ve learned from the ASR forums while teaching me/confirming what I’ve heard from my own gear regarding crosstalk and power requirements for my headphones.

Thank you ASR for this explanation. Lifted a veil tormenting me for years!! Cheers!!🍺

Thanks for taking the time to educate us on the topic.

Great video. Very helpful. I’ve been in the hobby for about 10 years but I learned a fair bit from this

Yes, explains balanced/unbalanced characteristics for headphones and equipment that’s easy to understand. Also good to know the amount of benefit in going bal input and output depending on your circumstance.

While I don't always agree with your reviews, Amir, I really do appreciate what you are doing here. You're one of the good guys. Keep the good content coming! Cheers!

Thanks again for another clear and relatively easy to follow presentation. You answered questions I had not thought to ask.:-)

I'm a big fan of your work! Thanks for being an asset to the audio community

I have learned more about audio science from this channel in the past week of binging than I have in 7-8 years of internet "research". Thank you Amir, great info, please keep up the awesome work!

Love these videos. I can learn more in 20 minutes than I have in months of viewing random forum posts :x

thanks for this! it was on my request list!

One of the best audio channels out there, like this is top 5 out of thousands for sure.

Most useful discussion on the topic I have seen. Thanx

Thank you for making such great content. They are really useful.

Nice one. Addressing that ground loop issue could be an interesting topic for a future lesson...cheers and thank you!

Wow!! Just found this and instantly subscribed. Love your website/trusted honesty and your expertise is top rank. Thanks for doing this!!!!!!!!

The best explanation of this topic I have come across

The best in the world! He helped me immensely in my hi end low price shopping.

This video was so informative. It addressed all my doubts. Great work! and Thank you!

Thanks for your concise succinct information on this often misunderstood subject.

All of this knowledge that is gushing out of this fountain is awe-inspiring and all of that feel good jazz Amir! I'll be super keen to also understand how switching to balanced connections contributes to much better separated instruments and open sound. Like the difference is night and day for me, subjectively. This is what I experienced on some fairly decent IEMs initially when did some quick A/B listenings and it was like having an acid trip for the first time kinda big! :D It changed the way I experience music for good and motivated me enough to switch my home listening to a balanced one too! Again big thanks for the invaluable reviews and measurements of studio monitors and DACs among others. Super enjoying learning something new everyday abour our fav hobby! More power to you! Surely the snakey businesses won't like you, but you're a super hero to the rare good ones and us small potatoes :D

Excellent explanation, amazing teaching skills.

This explains why I don't hear a difference between my balanced and unbalanced headphone cables. I'm glad my balanced cable is more practical (supple), so not complete waste of money.

Learnt so much, thank you Amir.

Thanks for the great content !

That was a great explanation, thank you much. I learned a lot.

Thanks so much Amir. This has been a source of confusion since I took the deep dive into "audiophile land" 4 years ago.

Great explanations, much appreciated.

Best video explaining Balanced audio. thanks

Excellent video, and NOW I understand it!

Learned a lot here, thanks! :)

Great video! Thank you!

An Audio Science Easter Egg! Thanks Amir. :)

Hello Amir! Just a request. Make playlists for every category of your channel (tutorials, reviews, live sessions or whatever etc.). Your channel is growing and in time there will be a lot of videos . I'd much appreciate if you would create playlists of this kind! Cheers!

Amir: another great video that illustrates that there are plenty reviewers that don’t know anything. Also please make a video debunking Directional RCA. Thanks

I've sent this video to all my friends complaining about "too much separation on 'balanced' HP outs" :D

Good info on the 4 pin XLR.

Read a lot of reviews of Amir, nice to see him live in a video! very interesting video

Another and educational video. I have 2 Stereo power amplifiers, both from the same manufacturer. One is balanced, the other is ‘single ended’. The balanced amp weighs 73kg. The single ended amp weighs 39kg. The balanced amp cost almost twice that of the single ended. Other than weight and dimensions they share virtually identical specifications and measurements. Whilst I take on board the virtues of a balanced design, is not the caveat that twice the number of electronics are needed. Hence double the weight and price. Surely, the more complex and crowded the signal path is, the more the opportunity to degrade the original. Causing greater deviation from the creators intent. So, whilst the signal may be cleaner, it is not as pure. Not maintaining it’s fidelity!

finally trully pro audio channel, thank you!

Looking forward to your tests debunking balanced channel separation. Especially in a balanced tube amp.

Thanks Amir!!

Very helpful!

That was awesome. I've been switching from thinking I need balanced cables to thinking I don't need them at all. I have a Ifi Zen DAC/Amp which on unbalanced is good for a 300-ohm max headphone. As it so happens, I have Drop Senn 6XX which is 300. Unbalanced, it will go 20 600 ohms. The 6xx get plenty loud without it. I'm not good enough to tell if there is a sound difference even if there was a sound difference. I've also switched from my Dragonfly Black 1.5 to my computer to the Zen and on those, I can tell a difference in the same source. I didn't think I would, but the Zen's output is crystal clear. So much extra behind and within the music.

The balanced outputs on my dac go through a tangle of wires behind my media console to reach the inputs of my active speakers, so I am happy to have them

Thank you for this educational video Amir! Would it be possible, from your chart of headphone sensitivity/efficiency, to tell at what point when going up the graph in inefficiency the headphones will start needing one, then two, the three etc. volts or watts of current to run those headphones at a loud, but listenable level? Thanks again!

excellent!

I love the stuff Amir please I really do! I’m just saying as long ago as when I was in high school rock band with long microphone XLR cables running to some main board Peavey PA system in an BBC auditorium that’s when I first heard of the stuff about “balanced” and XLR. OK I don’t know if this would be a good request for a new video (it’s more related to music instrument industry) rather than hi-fi industry but many times with guitar equipment a DI boxes things that are going to go into a long run of cables back to the PA system they call something the ground lift circuit. I don’t if it’s worth it but a ground lift circuit explanation I would find interesting!. 👏🏻

Thank you. Question (for future videos, perhaps): What are the risks in plugging in/out analog connections without turning off DACs, Amps, headphone dongles, active speakers?

Thanks for a short "clear" explanation. Mr. Pete----------> aging hippie

you should do a video on when and why you need a pre-amp

I'm not a electrical engineer specializing in audio. I am a professionally trained engine builder. Trust me, when it comes to performance you better care about the nut and bolts. I recommend APR products.

Thanks! Could you expand on balanced relating to phono cartridges? My intuition suggests the are balanced by nature, but perhaps more prone to induced noise by the tonearm cables not always being fully symmetrical (at least not the normal RCA connectors). And while you're at it, what about a separate ground connection, and shielding effect from grounding the armtube and any screen on the cables? I've run XLR everywhere except tonearm to phono preamp for decades. Everything is gratifyingly quiet, even the record player (though possible to hear hum when cranked up beyond listening level or with an ear against a speaker). Really appreciate you the few other sensible engineering minded sources of information on audio.

the ground pin in the XLR connector is also connected to power/chassis ground by some means. It's still prone to ground loop.

I always felt that the term “push/pull” more accurately described what they called a balanced headphone output. Probably not as marketable though. Thanks.

Hi Amir, could you do a vid on AES vs I2S vs USB audio, as usual keep up the excellent content!

My concern with the growing popularity of XLR/ balanced in/out for marketing reasons is there are a lot of cheap bad balance transformers. A cheap amp will be single ended in and use a cheap transformer to convert the balanced in. I'd take a good unbalanced in to a cheap balanced any day. And the best balanced in would be transformerless.

Hello Amir, thank you for your videos, they are very informative. What are your thoughts on the BACCH software that enhances the spatial characteristics of headphones (and speakers)?

Thanks Sir. =)

I used to be able to hear every time my fridge and my central heating kicked in on my stereo. Audiophiles used to tell me that they put unwanted rubbish on my 240V mains. Since I replace the last single ended signal cable connection with a balanced line there has been total silence (except for the music of course).

1st if someone needs power out of single ended. FA-10 is the way to go. 2nd from what I understand it is better to not have a ground for audio... generally speaking. I know iFi has some special ground filter. Problem with the balanced is that some brands will only focus single ended just as a check box, and you may run in to issues if try use multiple inputs. 789 for example, if you connect a DAC and a turntable, whatever source you user RCA for, will get a lower quality. That is why I like to keep everything single ended, no ground connection, filtered usb signal from dedicated streamer to DAC, and everyone is happy.

Great video. However the DT990 which shows as one of the more "least sensitive" headphones in your graph is an Single Ended headphone, so buying a 'balanced' output amp (more power) doesn't help to counter the sensitivity issue.

Merci.

Is it possible to connect the balanced 3 pin xrl male at the rear of D90 to a headamp with 4.4 plug input? Any caution should be taken of the voltage output?

11:49 why trying to fix some humming on an old interface from 1974, I noticed that when I tried putting something on the output of a passthrough and noticed some of it came through on my speakers very quietly, also the humming seems to be caused by some microphonics in the cables picking up from the transformer (this thing has such a mess of cables since the "pcbs" were actually just masked on with like a stencil or something so they couldn't fit a lot of traces. The humming remained even when I took the transformer out and off to the side on carpet so it seems the vibrations are sent down the wires...). My guess is back in the day every channel mixed together a bit so maybe there was some truth to having better separation since it got rid of a reference ground that was full of noise? For the life of me I can figure out what causes this inconsistent and sometimes consistent feedback of that humming causing it to get amplified. I dont actually mind it when it is pretty quiet, its kinda nice actually, but it constantly changes volume sometimes (usually gets louder then all of a sudden quiet with a slight popping sound) or goes to a level where its audible while actually playing music (or usually movies/video games) through.

Running Focal headphones balanced is so overkill. But I wouldn't do it any other way. I love that they use 2-pole 2.5mm connectors for ease of cable replacement.

Hi Amir, I watched this video quite a while ago, but have now developed a problem that I would like to ask a question and possibly get some advice from you. I have a holo audio May kte DAC, it has XLR or balanced output. The output voltage on balanced/XLR is 5.8 V rms. Unbalanced/RCA is 2.9 V rms this is on PCM 48K NOS. The output voltage when using DSD 128x is Balanced/XLR 2.9 V rms and unbalanced/RCA 1.45 V rms. When using an AES/EBU cable from my CD player to the DAC I'm hearing distortion when in PCM mode. When I switch to an unbalanced/RCA connection there is no audible distortion. And again when using a balance connection in DSD there does not seem to be any distortion that I can hear, making me suspect it's to do with the relatively high output voltage from the DAC in balanced PCM mode. Obviously I would like to use a balanced connection without switching to DSD all the time, but I am at a loss as to know how to do this and avoid the distortion. Do you have any suggestions? Many thanks Shane.

Galvanic isolation is still needed on the USB input to avoid electrical noise from the computer.

some turntables have din, "balanced" outputs now like the pro-ject x series tables, and they sell a matching phono preamp that accepts this connection. since this is a 4-pin connection it isn't the same as an XLR balanced connection, any thoughts on these? would this help prevent grounding issues with a turntable? most do not have this though so not really an option

Can you review the ibasso dc04? It is a cheap dac/amp dongle with impressive specs (on paper). I'm wondering if it is good enough to feed a balanced headphone amplifier as the wa11 topaz (I know the dac section of the wa11 is not great). Thanks

Question for ya: I have always just used the Optical out from my PC to my Emotiva DC-1. To me it sounds like going with USB introduces all kinds of random issues. I like simple/boring. Are there any real world drawbacks going this route? My DC-1 just completely out of the blue started giving me a buzzing noise through the headphone jacks, which I use almost exclusively... Now looking at Topping as a replacement. Emotiva - You had a good run!! I did plug my IEMS directly into my PC and even with a high powered 3080 video card, I have ZERO noise issues, so it's the Emotiva...

The Beyerdynamic DT990 250 Ohm headphones may not be terribly sensitive but I regularly use my iPhone to drive them and they get plenty loud and sound great.. For 160 dollars they're hard to beat at their price point.

Great video. Now I don't feel so bad about spending a little extra to get a 4.4mm to 4.4mm cable for my Zen stack.

Cool, I have never understood the balanced thing with headphones. I never bothered because balanced cables are very quickly in the 200-300€ range, so I always thought it was snake oil. But it makes sense that it relates to power.

So if I have a balanced output on my Schitt freya plus preamp and the rca input of my amp does is help to use a cable that has rca and xlr?

I've read that the best way with balanced is to have both source and amp earthed so the current leakage and voltage potential is equalized through the power cable. The shield in the balanced cable would then create a ground loop so its best to be disconnected at one side(amp). It's also the legal way to do it so not to get shocked if a device would short to chassi. There's been a while since I built my diy dac so please correct any erroneous statements.

Sorry if I missed something here.. I thought the 4 pin connector was originally used to go hand in hand with a balanced topology? You brought that up at the beginning of the video, but neglected to discuss it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a normal stereo amp is basically two mono amps that share a ground. A true balanced amp has four mono amps, two per channel in a push/pull configuration. (Positive and negative side of the circuit.) This is the reason for doubling the power of a given amplifier circuit, but the real purpose is to completely reject any feedback from the ground side. This is supposed to reduce the noise floor to below "silent" and reduce cross talk. Some of the modern designs with "balanced output" may not use a true balanced topology, like you were saying. Some are simply single ended with an internal adaptor and others such as the THX AAA series, use other tricks (feed forward error correction on the case of THX) to achieve the same results. I agree though, it doesn't much matter what happens inside, if you like what comes out. I don't know what happens inside my A90 for example, but I plainly prefer the presentation over my 789, even if the immediate characteristics are the same. The sense of depth and realism are much better, to me.

Glad to see hd650 sensitivity 288 behind the focal utopia 149. Currently using an unbalanced dac+amp, Would definitely replaced it with balanced in the future since amir pointed out the faulty circuitry design in the unbalanced system.

Very nice videos Amir! One small remark, your audio levels are kind of low, the peak levels seldomly reach -10dBFS.

Curious to know what Amir consideres to be "way up" volume, I'm assuming extremely loud.

It would be nice to have also current measurements, low impedance headphones do care about current more than watts.

Am I correct in thinking that in a differential (balanced) headphone output that it would necessarily introduce another inverter/amp device that theoretically could negatively affect the measurements, even if below the threshold of hearing? Of course I mean in contrast to single ended outputs which doesn't need a driver to invert the signal. Thanks for this vid, I never thought about the headphone output not really being balanced.

Another thing of note is that some transducers like current more than others. Having that nice point to point voltage swing is nice, but if the amplifier cannot meet the current demands of the transducer, the sound can become "thin". From what I have noticed (subjectively) that you typically lose some of the "slam" and some of the dynamics of the transducer when current limited. I have personally noticed this to be more of an issue on lower impedance planar headphones (and speakers in general, but I'll stick with HPs for now). Even though you have plenty of voltage swing, planars seem to really love having a lot of current to draw. Again, this is purely subjective and I am not even sure how or if this is something that can be easily seen in measurement. (I personally dont subscribe to the "measurements are everything" philosophy. While certainly an important thing, true fidelity is not gunna happen unless you are listening to the music on the exact system it was recorded on. I tend to just go with what sounds "good to me".

In theory the crosstalk will be better if the two headphone drivers don't share the same ground. As long as the headphone cable has a reasonably low impedance, however, it won't likely be noticeable. It's more of an issue in big power amplifiers, where 6" of shared ground wire for the output terminals could easily become the limiting factor in crosstalk when driving low impedance loads.

I need to run 3.5mm from my TV to stereo RCA on my powered speakers. How can ensure audio integrity/quality with the adaptor connection?

He Amir. Pardon. Don’t know how to contact you otherwise. What do you think about ceiling treatment? I have one strong reflection coming from there and was thinking about treating it. I will need to treat by back wall since my sofa is right against that wall. I agree with Toole that I don’t want to treat the side walls. One because they are far away in my room and I don’t want to over deaden the room. It’s nice a lively now. And I listen to classical mostly. Will treating a portion of the ceiling you think deaden the room? A lot of bass resonates from there as well from my measurements. Thanks as I haven’t found much on ceiling treatments and theory

Funny story. I bought an amp that had balanced inputs, but my preamp only had RCA out. So I bought an unbalanced to balanced converter (an ARTS model) and, ironically enough, having that powered on did end up introducing a very slight ground loop into the whole system. I just switched back to unbalanced, which meant I had to raise the amp's gain. I found the noise floor (whitish noise, and quiet enough you had to put your ear very close to the speaker to hear it) much less annoying than the hum, which could be heard from a few feet away. I wish balanced connections weren't only put on premium products.

The audible difference between the two topologies for regular wire-length (not for metres and metres) is barely perceivable. The only clear advantage for balanced (BAL) is more power, if you need it. Practically, SE can be as good as BAL depending on the implementation. In the non-professional audio market, BAL units are more expensive, or expensive units use BAL, not because it is so but because it is made so by the marketing dept of the manufacturer when they choose specs for the different models. In theory, there are sonic advatages to BAL but in practical terms and for home use the differences are very-to-extremely small while the cost is usually significantly more for BAL, including accessories (e.g. headphone cables, interconnect cables etc).

Good point with the headphone output connection. Never got my head around why people seem to think the four-pin output is “balanced” and the TRS is unbalanced. Worth a note is that in “professional grade” interfaces you'll rarely see a four-pin headphone output. There are some “mastering grade” interfaces that do but that's rare too. I think this connection is branded to consumer products and that's where we get the idea of it being “balanced.” But second note here would be that mixing engineers and mastering engineers use headphones as a tool for the really critical listening (finding clicks, pops and such).

maybe you could try and replicate a ground loop, and show how balanced reduces/removes ground loops

So with the Topping A30 Pro (that does balanced in but not balanced out but has XLR+pentaconn) you wouldn't be missing out on a lot? I've been wondering since the review.

sick

Amir is it possible to review the Spatial Audio Labs open baffle speakers ? The X3, X5 seem very good in subjective reviews and sound clips (they are available at the New Record Day channel). There is not much measurement out there for these speakers, yet but they seem very good. NRD is going to perform some measurements on the X5 soon though.

If the voltage for each cup of a single ended headphone cable oscillates from 0V to +2V instead of -2V to 2V with a "balanced" connection, does that change the way the voice coil or diaphragm of the headphone is moved inside the magnetic field?

Amir, I'm sure that there is very few people that would attempt to measure the voltage on audio gear, but isn't the voltage/current for analog signals AC? Also, what would the AC current be on a speaker cable if the max output was 100 watts into 8 ohms? Folks get so hung up on speaker cables and I may be wrong, but the required cable size might be smaller than most folks think they need. Being in the welding biz I know more copper is better, to a point, but my work can be 100s of amps DC at 80-90% duty cycle.