Orpheus successor...

I'm now going to qualify (and quantify) what others and Sennheiser might see as me having an outburst.

Actually my objection isn't about the product being referred to by this topic - it is about another product which misleads people into believing their conventional signal (single ended) is asymmetrical.

That sort of thing belongs to the "emotional blackmail" department!

I would like to reassure all reading this that a single ended signal is symmetrical - the signal still commutates about its axis!

The words "asymmetrical" and "symmetrical" are an ill-chosen way to talk about single-ended and balanced signals.

The claim that the product changes asymmetrical signals into symmetrical signals is not a true one in my engineering "book". It is a misrepresentation.

Picture this...


(Taken from Wikipedia - who I incidentally donate to)

It shows that a sine-wave is symmetrical, and it will be symmetrical whether it's single-ended or balanced!

The only difference with balanced is that there are two symmetrical signals of opposing phase - when one is going positive the other is going negative.

The problem with such high-power advertising as Sennheiser is using stating that single-ended  signals are NOT symmetrical is that people actually believe it!

They take such false explanations and run-scared from all other manufacturers!

I cannot tell you how many times over the years I have had emails from people worried that their signal won't be symmetrical.

This kind of advertising plays straight at those worries. It plants a seed of deep concern into the minds of those who know no better.

Sennheiser should state facts and not fiction.

Eh?

Music signals can be asymmetrical because it's that that gives them their characteristic sounds.

Whether they be through single ended connection or balanced they will remain as they are (if you omit other artefacts that happen no matter what).

And balanced IS one signal of original phase and another identical but 180 degrees out of phase.

So balanced gives you a non-inverted signal on one "leg" and an inverted signal on the other.

(I should know about this because virtually all broadcast-audio uses balanced and I designed literally hundreds of balanced audio circuits for a number of applications over a four year period)

One of the advantages of balanced being the lack of ground (except for shielding) which in a complex system of racks and sub-racks helps by not pulling exessive ground current. And that's why it was used in and around studios.

And I suppose it might help in some headphone amp apps because a pcb ground trace back to origin is like all pcb tracks (and wires to some lesser extent) - inductive.

And as such the inductance will appear in series with the headphones and the NFB node will be influenced to a degree by this "added inductance" at some really high frequency.

And so removing this series inductance will I suppose improve clarity - BUT it is not only a balanced domain thing as many will claim...

That inductance can be effectively removed in a single-sided headphone return either by giving the PCB a solid ground plane, or by hard wiring back from jack ground to ground origin (in a "star" ground system) using a twisted pair with both ends commoned.

And you don't need to cut a ground track in the process as a shorted inductor (track) is no longer an inductor.

Anyway, that was common-sense electronics...