Just ordered a balanced cable for my HD800, am I wasting my money?

[pkane2001]

1 hour ago, austinpop said:

FWIW, here's my experience with my HD800 with SD mod. Not quite the 800S, but very similar.

 

For me, I did experience a better sound quality with upgraded balanced cables, although in my case the cable change and unbalanced -> balanced transition occurred in one step. That is why your experience with just the  unbalanced -> balanced transition will be interesting. Please do post your findings.

 

In my case, I first moved from stock unbalanced to Moon Audio Black Dragon cable, terminated with a 4-pin XLR. At the time, I was driving the HD800 directly from the Codex, so I also got Moon to build be a female XLR to 2x3.5mm adapter for the Codex. The Black Dragon+balanced move was a nice step up in quality. This gave the sound a warmer palette, and definitely tamed the treble, while giving better bass definition. However note that this improvement was a combination of exploiting the balanced mode of the Codex as well as the cable.

 

My next change was to my current Cardas Clear, so I was going from Black Dragon balanced to Cardas Clear balanced. And this time, both to my Cavalli Liquid Gold amp.

 

The Cardas Clear upgrade was one of my most satisfying cable purchases. It's expensive, sure, but I lucked out with a good used deal, so it wasn't too bad. The Clear just adds a beguiling combination of smoothness, warmth AND resolution to the SQ. It's really hard to describe, but it was very hard for me to go back.

 

I'm not sure this is helping, other than to say cables do change to sound, and balanced mode helps with certain amps. 

 

Other than that, YMMV!

 

When going from unbalanced to fully balanced the output usually goes up by 6dB.  So, do level matching when trying to compare before and after.

[pkane2001]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

balanced cables provide attenuation of EMF that is radiated into all cables; a star-quad configuration will reduce that further - you may or may not have a noisy enough environment to make a difference, but it is always a wise idea

 

Benchmark Audio has a white paper explaining this

 

however, $300 for a cable is too much...

 

Actually, a balanced cable provides no additional EMF protection over an unbalanced one in the case of a headphone cable. The only difference with a balanced configuration in this case is that there are two separate amplifier circuits doing processing of the + and - inputs into the headphone. This doubles the voltage output -- i.e., provides a 6dB gain, but also adds complexity and possible distortions if the circuits are not perfectly matched. A single-ended output has only one amplifier driving the output, so 1/2 the voltage, but no additional distortions due to mismatched halves of the amplifier.

 

$300 is way too much for a balanced cable. I made one out of Canare star-quad 4E6S 5m cable for my HD650s. Total price with cable and connectors was under $50, and that had two XLR connectors. The only reason I wanted this balanced was because I needed the greater voltage output of the balanced circuit.

[pkane2001]

3 hours ago, jabbr said:

I used balanced cables on my HD800s ... just because ??‍♂️ ... the universe should be balanced ?

 

A balanced universe might be a very boring place. It’s the spontaneous symmetry breaking that created the laws of nature in ours, and therefore us, and everything else. Or maybe not ?

[pkane2001]

35 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

Excellent point! Let's say that the background universe should be balanced, and we are the spontaneous symmetry breaking. Analogously, our reproduction electronics should be neutral and balanced, allowing the music to flow spontaneously ?

 

You are a poet, my friend!