General Headphone Audio

I had custom cans cables with the HD650, same weight and termination quality as the current gen Tripowin cables so no complaints there, I just can't see why anyone would pay over twice the price for what custom cans want for the same cable quality essentially, both use pure copper cores and terminations appear just as good, though Tripowin only recently updated their terminations to be a a bit nicer than before though I think that's more to do with the heat shrinking than anything else.

But yeah for this price not sure much can beat them without spending a lot more, assuming the colours available are to y our liking, so for me the purple is just right :cool:
 
mrk said:
I had custom cans cables with the HD650, same weight and termination quality as the current gen Tripowin cables so no complaints there, I just can't see why anyone would pay over twice the price for what custom cans want for the same cable quality essentially, both use pure copper cores and terminations appear just as good, though Tripowin only recently updated their terminations to be a a bit nicer than before though I think that's more to do with the heat shrinking than anything else.

But yeah for this price not sure much can beat them without spending a lot more, assuming the colours available are to y our liking, so for me the purple is just right :cool:
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Yea, it's customisation options with Sky Audio, Custom Cans etc. Any colour, length, or termination type. Although the Custom Cans HD 6x0 cable is £91.50 if I select 4.4mm termination. So over two times the price.

It would be nice to have more colour options with the Tripowin cables; a bright orange, or lime green for example. But I get it, there's probably a limited market for this stuff.
 
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Timber said:
Just caught up on Balanced conversation above, but the sense I got is that balanced can make sense where you want more power to drive higher impedance headphones, or from a convenience POV where all your headphones are wired for balanced. Certainly looking at something like the Fiio K7 from a few years ago the SE output is no better than the Fiio K5 it (sort of) succeeded; all the improvements and features were on the balanced side. And Fiio doesn't seem that alone in making balanced a feature on many of its entry level DAC/AMPs (i.e. Fosi Audio K7 etc.). And where as balanced was exotic when I first got into the hobby all of the more recent entry-level DAC/AMPs I have all seem to have Balanced & SE outputs and for the HD 6x0 it makes sense to use balanced. Certainly where the prices of aftermarket cables are concerned it doesn't really matter whether it is balanced or SE.
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If the device you own or want to buy has it then no reason not to use and it will provide more power than the same devices single ended output but as we discussed its not an inherently better thing and theres no need to spend money to "upgrade" to a device with it.

Its in all the recent chi-fi as a "feature" but if you look at western brands it's still very much not a priority for them. The jds element and atom as examples are extremely popular and well reviewed devices with excellent measurements that dont offer balanced designs and can still output more power than 99% of headphones could ever need.
 
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Angst said:
If the device you own or want to buy has it then no reason not to use and it will provide more power than the same devices single ended output but as we discussed its not an inherently better thing and theres no need to spend money to "upgrade" to a device with it.

Its in all the recent chi-fi as a "feature" but if you look at western brands it's still very much not a priority for them. The jds element and atom as examples are extremely popular and well reviewed devices with excellent measurements that dont offer balanced designs and can still output more power than 99% of headphones could ever need.
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Yep, agreed. I kinda landed on balanced cables for the HD 650 by accident and on my Fiio K11 it was a feature I'd never thought I'd use, i.e. it wasn't a reason to buy one. I think iFi is another one who have embraced balanced and it does feel like 4.4mm is becoming much more common.
 
Godmdan you guys, I now have a Tripowin cable in my basket....annoyingly, it seems the price has jumped £9 from this afternoon to tonight.
 
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mrk said:
May need a wall with those pegs to hang headphones off in the near future :p
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Lol

Yea, although I owned these Sennheiser hanging hooks (nearly 20 years old) but gone off them because any padding in the headphones is crushed. So the hook needs to be no wider than an AA battery. And if you store them like Zeos you ruin the earpads. So now use these cheapo plastic hooks that don't damaged the headband. Although I think the best solution is to bag the headphones up and put them away when not in use.

Not in your league, but managed to negotiate down a Topping D10 Balanced to £75 on the auction site. Felt like a good deal and sorts out my DAC issue. Also takes any kind of pressure off needing a K13 R2R day-one hopefully. Oh and the Gremlin has cleared customs. So all good.
 
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Similar we are on holiday that week. Does seem to be one of the few ways to experience headphones, DAC/AMPs or at least a good selection of them.
 
I am not....but it is so far away from me....also, I don't think a place like that is the ideal place to audition headphones. Especially open back headphones.
 
Timber said:
Just caught up on Balanced conversation above, but the sense I got is that balanced can make sense where you want more power to drive higher impedance headphones, or from a convenience POV where all your headphones are wired for balanced. Certainly looking at something like the Fiio K7 from a few years ago the SE output is no better than the Fiio K5 it (sort of) succeeded; all the improvements and features were on the balanced side. And Fiio doesn't seem that alone in making balanced a feature on many of its entry level DAC/AMPs (i.e. Fosi Audio K7 etc.). And where as balanced was exotic when I first got into the hobby all of the more recent entry-level DAC/AMPs I have all seem to have Balanced & SE outputs and for the HD 6x0 it makes sense to use balanced. Certainly where the prices of aftermarket cables are concerned it doesn't really matter whether it is balanced or SE.
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Single ended can be as good if not better technically than balanced, but since Chi-fi brands have pushed balanced as a 'golden goose' nearly everyone has had to follow suit so today balanced is prioritised on most products now, mainly meaning more power (as you alluded to) with single ended being an after thought, so today to be honest it's quite hard to stay single ended, especially if you use multiple products, I recently had to reluctantly make the switch myself as between my DAP, dongles, and main headphone amp/s it was becoming a pain, so yes today I would recommend balanced as that is what the industry has decided to push and not using it is essentially only using half the amp you've paid for.

Now power requirements, that's a tricky one, sometimes I find it hard to know which side of the fence I fall on, you have ASR crowd saying that nearly any headphone can be ran from an Apple Dongle, and the head-fi crowd saying you need 10w to get the best out of your headphone! One thing I will say is that I'm always surprised how well a headphone like the HD6XX can run on even a Qudelix 5k using single ended which is rated 80mW @ 32ohms! although I do feel that the HD6XX/600/650 have the ability to scale with more power, other headphones not so much, I'd comfortably argue that blind tested 99% of people couldn't hear the difference between a JDS Labs atom stack vs amp costing in the thousands, people way over estimate what they think they need to make a headphone sound good, myself included.
 
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