Balanced Headphone/Cable Help

[RowBearToe]

Hey guys! Hoping to get some help on balanced headphones/cables. I have a digital audio player that offers a balanced output (separate DACs for L and R audio) that I would love to utilize. I reached out to V-Moda about the Crossfade M-100s and they claim that they support a balanced input. There are 3.5mm jacks on both the L and R headphone. However, the cable that comes with the headphones only connects to the left ear. This makes me think they must be wired together internally and therefore aren't balanced. However, when I've questioned V-Moda on this, they are insistent that a balanced cable will work. Is it possible to have headphones that work both ways like this? I bought a balanced cable and am only able to hear anything out of the left headphone regardless of whether I plugged the cable into both the L & R jacks, or hooked up just the L or just the R. Thoughts?

Here is the latest email response from V-Moda:

I spoke with our technician about your issue. Our headphones take a 4 pole Balanced cable the order of the poles should be Left, Right, Left Ground, Right Ground. The headphones, The cable and the source all have to support balanced source. The balanced cable must be 4 pole cable on both ends in order for it to be a true balanced cable.

Again, they make it seem like it should work but I just don't understand how it's possible that they aren't wired together internally. Any help is appreciated, thanks!

 

[HiFi Guy]

Hey guys! Hoping to get some help on balanced headphones/cables. I have a digital audio player that offers a balanced output (separate DACs for L and R audio) that I would love to utilize. I reached out to V-Moda about the Crossfade M-100s and they claim that they support a balanced input. There are 3.5mm jacks on both the L and R headphone. However, the cable that comes with the headphones only connects to the left ear. This makes me think they must be wired together internally and therefore aren't balanced. However, when I've questioned V-Moda on this, they are insistent that a balanced cable will work. Is it possible to have headphones that work both ways like this? I bought a balanced cable and am only able to hear anything out of the left headphone regardless of whether I plugged the cable into both the L & R jacks, or hooked up just the L or just the R. Thoughts?

Here is the latest email response from V-Moda:

I spoke with our technician about your issue. Our headphones take a 4 pole Balanced cable the order of the poles should be Left, Right, Left Ground, Right Ground. The headphones, The cable and the source all have to support balanced source. The balanced cable must be 4 pole cable on both ends in order for it to be a true balanced cable.

Again, they make it seem like it should work but I just don't understand how it's possible that they aren't wired together internally. Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Your balanced outputs are for connecting to an amplifier with balanced inputs. Being balanced, you get twice the output (usually 4 Volts as opposed to 2 volts for unbalanced RCA. Theoretically you'll get less noise with balanced but the noise level on any quality piece of gear should be low enough that the difference would be nearly imperceptible.

Balanced cables have an advantage in a pro environment. The noise level stays low even with long cable runs. Also, gear can be connected or disconnected "hot" without causing buzzing or humming while being connected or disconnected, unlike RCA/unbalanced.

So you can have balanced line level inputs on the back panel to connect to other gear. A headphone amp with balanced headphone outputs will have 2 XLR sockets on the front panel, marked L and R (see picture).

Balanced cables are 3 conductors per channel. Unbalanced cables are 2 conductors per channel. The manufacturer's email states "4 pole balanced" which is 4 conductors, no matter how you want to slice it. They aren't balanced headphones.

 

[RowBearToe]

Your balanced outputs are for connecting to an amplifier with balanced inputs. Being balanced, you get twice the output (usually 4 Volts as opposed to 2 volts for unbalanced RCA. Theoretically you'll get less noise with balanced but the noise level on any quality piece of gear should be low enough that the difference would be nearly imperceptible.

Balanced cables have an advantage in a pro environment. The noise level stays low even with long cable runs. Also, gear can be connected or disconnected "hot" without causing buzzing or humming while being connected or disconnected, unlike RCA/unbalanced.

So you can have balanced line level inputs on the back panel to connect to other gear. A headphone amp with balanced headphone outputs will have 2 XLR sockets on the front panel, marked L and R (see picture).

Balanced cables are 3 conductors per channel. Unbalanced cables are 2 conductors per channel. The manufacturer's email states "4 pole balanced" which is 4 conductors, no matter how you want to slice it. They aren't balanced headphones.

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Thank you for the response and the insight! It sounded to me like they weren't balanced headphones, but they seemed so sure that I was questioning myself. The DAP I have is the Pioneer XDP-300R. Based on the manual and some of the research I've done online, I was under the impression that I didn't need an amp and could connect directly to the headphones from the DAP. Is that not the case?

Your quality point leads me to another question. The 300R touts that the dual dac balanced output provides higher sound quality. I really like the Crossfade M-100s and think they sound great when connected via a regular connection, but the whole purpose of getting new headphones was to take advantage of that balanced output and see how much better it sounds. I've been trying to decide if it would even be that big of a difference or if I should just keep them and use them unbalanced. It seems that you don't think it'll make that much of a difference? Again, thank you for all of your help!

 

[HiFi Guy]

Thank you for the response and the insight! It sounded to me like they weren't balanced headphones, but they seemed so sure that I was questioning myself. The DAP I have is the Pioneer XDP-300R. Based on the manual and some of the research I've done online, I was under the impression that I didn't need an amp and could connect directly to the headphones from the DAP. Is that not the case?

Your quality point leads me to another question. The 300R touts that the dual dac balanced output provides higher sound quality. I really like the Crossfade M-100s and think they sound great when connected via a regular connection, but the whole purpose of getting new headphones was to take advantage of that balanced output and see how much better it sounds. I've been trying to decide if it would even be that big of a difference or if I should just keep them and use them unbalanced. It seems that you don't think it'll make that much of a difference? Again, thank you for all of your help!

Pioneer is playing a little loose and fast with the term "balanced". This really isn't balanced. It's dual mono- you have a DAC chip for each channel feeding an op amp chip for each channel. It's a great setup, but it's not balanced. That looks like a super nice unit BTW, so don't feel bad. Keep the headphones, use them unbalanced and enjoy.

Some home gear appears to be balanced but isn't- you can tap the XLR connectors off of the same connection points for the RCA outputs. That's not balanced. True balanced gear has transformers for the balanced options.

 

[apholden]

From what I've read, balanced line-level cables and balanced headphones are unrelated concepts, even though they use the same word.
For line-level cables, balanced means high, low, and ground wires for each channel as opposed to signal and ground for unbalanced. Advantages include less interference for long (>10 meters) runs and hot plugging. I've heard claims that unbalanced sounds better for short runs, but I can't remember where or if they know what they're talking about.
For headphones, balanced means the left ear and right ear have totally independent wiring with no ground wire instead of unbalanced headphones that have left power, right power, and common ground wires. Advantages include higher voltage swings because you can drive all 4 wires instead of only 2, and maybe less crosstalk between left and right channels (kinda like monoblocks).
If your dap has line-level outputs, you'll need a headphone amp regardless of whether they're balanced or unbalanced.

 

[RowBearToe]

Pioneer is playing a little loose and fast with the term "balanced". This really isn't balanced. It's dual mono- you have a DAC chip for each channel feeding an op amp chip for each channel. It's a great setup, but it's not balanced. That looks like a super nice unit BTW, so don't feel bad. Keep the headphones, use them unbalanced and enjoy.

Some home gear appears to be balanced but isn't- you can tap the XLR connectors off of the same connection points for the RCA outputs. That's not balanced. True balanced gear has transformers for the balanced options.

Ah, true, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I got it for well under retail and absolutely love it! I really like how the two sound together so I think I'll stick with it and not worry about using the balanced output for now. Thanks for all of the help!

 

[RowBearToe]

From what I've read, balanced line-level cables and balanced headphones are unrelated concepts, even though they use the same word.
For line-level cables, balanced means high, low, and ground wires for each channel as opposed to signal and ground for unbalanced. Advantages include less interference for long (>10 meters) runs and hot plugging. I've heard claims that unbalanced sounds better for short runs, but I can't remember where or if they know what they're talking about.
For headphones, balanced means the left ear and right ear have totally independent wiring with no ground wire instead of unbalanced headphones that have left power, right power, and common ground wires. Advantages include higher voltage swings because you can drive all 4 wires instead of only 2, and maybe less crosstalk between left and right channels (kinda like monoblocks).
If your dap has line-level outputs, you'll need a headphone amp regardless of whether they're balanced or unbalanced.

That clears up a lot of confusion, thank you! I don't think the dap is outputting line level so I should be good without an amp for now. Thanks again for the info!

 

[apholden]

I guess I can mention that a disadvantage of balanced headphones is that each speaker is floating between two power amplifiers, which means twice as many chances for distortion.