DIY Sennheiser HD6XX XLR Balanced Headphones Cables.

This balanced headphones cables is a parallel project with balanced headphones amplifier. Sennheiser HD6XX is a good performance headphones. It really love high power to drive it on it's true potential. This is because the impedance of this Sennheiser HD6XX is 300 ohm. Mostly for this high impedance headphones are use by the professional audio. For sure the power output from most digital audio player cannot drive well this headphones, thus not brings the true potential of this headphones either. That is why this balanced headphones cable for Sennheiser HD6XX project is come in before the amplifier. Approaching by using a balanced cable to Sennheiser HD6XX headphones is to double up the power since both polarity of signal wave are amplified. Another advantage from balanced headphones cable is by nature the noise should be reduced and better compares to the single ended cables.

DIY Headphones Balanced Amplifier Using Tripath TA2024

This balanced headphones amplifier is built in the same time with the balanced headphones cable. This projects are intended to make the Sennheiser HD6xx sing better.

The reason I will using the home amplifier Tripath TA2024 in this balanced headphone amplifier is because the HD6xx headphone require big power to drive it well. The balanced amplifier as the internal design of this Tripath TA2024 will be a solution because theoretically the balanced amplifier are amplify each polarity from the speakers or to the headphone.

Reading from the Tripath TA2024 datasheet, because the nominal output only about 4 watt per channel in the lowest distortion, so when this amplifier is pair with the higher impedance like this Sennheiser HD6xx this would be also working well.

Audioquest Dragonfly Black Ultra Portable DAC

My old iPod touch is never absence while I am traveling.

This habit has become part of my life since 2 decades ago. But today audio format is not always the red book 16 bit from CD holy grail music. The DSD and FLAC 24 bit become a part of my music collection as well. And for that reason the iPod is become a bottleneck for this higher resolution music format.

I start to using the USB Audio Player Pro (UAPP) installed in my phone. I just put an SD card and drop all my music on it. The portable DAC Chord Mojo set nicely on my home audio system and I don't want to take it while I am traveling. So I guess I need something more even portable device. It should more easy to drop in the bag and carry away.

It is quite late I know, but you will not get any bored to see the audio review for the Audioquest Dragonfly Black like this.

Chord Hugo Vs. Chord Mojo Comparison - Which Better?

I listen to this Chord Hugo for quite some time.

The fun fact, I had changed my current audio source since a month ago by using my android phones. The phone is Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite as my daily use for phone call, messaging, and all office activity on it. Then to make it suitable as for audio source purpose, I put extra memory card on it and copied all my music files to this phone.

I also paid US$9 and installed 'USB Audio Player Pro' (UAPP) from Play-store. This UAPP is the best music player. Besides the great UI, the main reason using this UAPP is because this player sending pure digital output through USB-C port to the attached DAC device. There is no over-sampling or whatsoever that makes music files not as play as the original files. This UAPP can also control the attached device volume control and disable the android internal volume control to get purer digital audio out.

With this setup, I get more flexibility when listening at home audio system or as portable player while on-the-go by using only one source. I only attaching my phone to any good DAC like this Chord Hugo or Mojo, then I got great sound everywhere.

Chord Hugo DAC First Look

Happy New Year 2020!

Starting in this new year, I got this Chord Hugo loan by my friend and I absolutely thrilled on how this things perform in my audio system.

This Chord Hugo on my hand is the earliest model, yet the production is earlier than the Chord Mojo. No wonder at the first look, this device looks quite ancient. Especially for the silver color. Maybe if this comes in black, it will be a different story I guess.