Benchmark Audio On Balanced VS Unbalanced Analog Interfaces

[Supernova]

I found this link while reading a thread on another forum and found it very interesting. Anyone have any comments, agreements or disagreements with it?

Balanced VS Unbalanced Analog Interfaces April 23, 2018

I did start searching specs on popular dacs and most seemed to be using consumer grade balanced outputs which isn't surprising. Would we even be able to hear the difference is my question.

[Evil Twin]

Some differences are apparent...

That very much depends on the rest of your system. Also, it depends on the intrinsic S/N of the source DAC.

In my experience, standard preamps are one of the main choke points for system S/N and distortion, and operating them with amplifiers using 1-1.5V input sensitivity is an additional contributor to dynamic range issues.

In my own system, I follow similar professional practicers such as Benchmark recommends.


Let's compare a recent well regarded consumer product from Schitt, against Benchmark's own power amplifier.


The Vidar has a "balanced" input which like some older Aragon Palladiums is just a way to convert an amplifier into a balanced bridge output, and will generally not have the noise rejection of a true professional balanced input- but it does convert the amplifier into a high power mono configuration.

I have some fondness for the thinking of Pass Labs and their "First Watt" thinking, so I tend to pay a lot of attention to how that watt looks, as regards S/N, distortion, all of which determine the true dynamic range and resolution.

Do note that the scales are different for the plotted graphs...

Can you hear the difference? Possibly in some systems... but also, possibly there are other factors revealed in more complex testing. But the distortion minima for the Benchmark is over an order of magnitude (10X) lower than for the Vidar. This reflects an intrinsically lower noise floor, as well as high linearity.


VIDAR




Benchmark