x2 and that is one fugly connector.

Knowing this, that plug is an even bigger FAIL.

I did say "thought put into it". 2 separate jacks where one can't be plugged into the other is easier

A little thought put into it, and you can build an amp with a 4-conductor mini jack

That was exactly my first thought. Why not just use a TRRS plug and jack? But then I was concerned about what would happen if someone tried to plug in regular phones, though......

that will go unbalanced when a 3-conductor headphone is plugged in. So no need for a 2nd jack.

...... if that can be done, its a great solution.

Man, I dont want all the IEM companies to make Ray's plug the standard balanced IEM plug.

Considering that the vast majority of IEMs are plugged directly into iPods, I find that to be just a little unlikely. Now if Apple were to adopt it, it would be a different story.

This only makes me want a balanced Pico Slim

This only makes me want a balanced Pico Slim

Well if that is the connector it would have to be about 50% less Slim.

Honestly I really don't mind if it's a little bit thicker, as long as it still sounds great.

Does it mean the battery will also be 50% less when going balanced?

And yeah, I agree with Beefy that a standard plug that can't rotate is a fail.

Honestly I really don't mind if it's a little bit thicker, as long as it still sounds great.

Does it mean the battery will also be 50% less when going balanced?

And yeah, I agree with Beefy that a standard plug that can't rotate is a fail.

well basically, just replace the op-amp in the Pico Slim with one of those chips that has differential outputs. ta-da, balanced output. battery life could even be increased depending on the performance/current draw of that chip.

doing balanced input + output would require doing a bit more and probably would be around 50% battery life

One thing interesting about Ray's new amp, afaik there is no US military plane that has ever been called "Protector".

So you can't combine colors in the way I wanted (i.e., "smoke" a blue or red color). I think they were able to do this at UE, so it's a bit frustrating. I'm now thinking Muddy Water Blue with some very small artwork to indicate R/L because, despite the comments earlier, I don't find it extremely easy to tell which is which.

Hmm, I just got another idea from the remold thread on HF. Why dont you have whatever color you want for the molds and then just have the tips as different colors? I dont know if JHA could do this though.

Re balanced: I'm just going to tape 2 Slims together.

@Jin: that's a pretty good idea, but I'm going to keep it simple.

Re balanced: I'm just going to tape 2 Slims together.

and duct-tape two iPods together for the balanced inputs. Synchronization could be tricky, though.

@ plug:

tried OJI portable balanced amp but .. - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

That actually seems to make more sense

a small lemo connector could be done nicely, but they're not cheap

Cheaper than having to regularly replace broken connectors?

jamato may be implying that part of the choice of that connector is to intentionally block the use of the standard 3.5mm jack

jamato would be the one to know

It appears to be a boat boat.

Re-reading that thread...... does anybody else get the impression that Ray has a financial stake in those connectors? He seems to be pushing awfully hard towards making them a standard.

Perhaps someone should also point out to him that this isn't the first balanced portable amp ever made, he's roughly 12 years too late on this one. Cough... Stax SRS-001... cough...

Ohhh as for having a financial interest, his crap isn't selling, pure and simple. Just look at that stealth phono stage which is so low key that less then 500 people have viewed the thread. Comments like the magical properties of his magical wire (made by the lowest bidder to some spec invented by bureaucrats) and the moar awesome balanced amp supposed to boost sales. No doubt he's going to offer said connector for sale to others.

Edited December 13, 200916 yr by spritzer

Well jamato confirmed that this amp doesn't share the digital volume control of the Shadow so we're back to the panasonic pot. That may also hint at only the output stage being differential so calling it balanced at all is kinda "meh" in my book.

Yup, dual gang only so either he's "faking" a 4 gang pot or the output stage is only balanced. That means the balanced input is useless and one could just as well buy a SRS-001 which is smaller and cheaper.

Not sure it would pair well with balanced armature drivers though.

The whole idea of balanced drive for IEMs is "meh" to me. Balanced drive should (I think) give 2x the noise floor of the amp which is bad news considering the issues most IEMs have with noise floors. Also doubles the output impedance which is likely again an issue with a lot of low impedance IEMs.

I guess you do still gain the distortion cancellation (if the source is balanced) and the slew rate gains (not sure what's to be gained in the case of IEMs).