go to a allans music.. or any music store.. (I just said allans as i'm sure they are in all states of Australia.) and grab a set of these.

Dual Unbalanced 1/4 Male to RCA Male

http://www.allansmusic.com.au/defau...ductCode=CPR201



run them from the rca outs on your M-audio to the 1/4 ins on you headphone amp.

theres always a balanced version as well if your so inclined.

Hey there mate, I'm after the highest possible quality here. What exactly is balanced and unbalanced? If possible is there a S/PDIF version of this? Thankyou lots.

There's no need to feed digital signal to a headphone amp, as headphone listenning is typically for feeding headphone mixes to a vocalist/performer. If you're using headphones for control-room monitoring, then you shold just plug into the sound-card's headphone out.

- get balanced lines whenever possible
- headphones amps will take any audio you feed to them and put them into headphones... simple as that.... so you can run any of your outputs into the HPA.

(there was no need for me to write what was there before no hard feelings )

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Last edited by SgtFoo on Sep-19-2006 at 04:49

Ah, sorry... I didn't mean to sound dumb... My aim is to get more sound performance and level than my soundcard can provide, I heard quality of cables can make a difference but I just didn't understand this balanced and unbalanced 1/4 trs concept so I wanted to know what the difference is... Believe me I've done my fair share of research but have totally confused myself so I thought I'd start from the beginning and ask people who might know better. Thanks for your replies!

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quote:

Originally posted by SgtFoo so you're after the highest possible quality, and yet, you don't know what balanced or unbalanced is? do some research and then seek the quality.

Dude there's no need for that - everyone is after the highest possible quality, but at no point did he act arrogant or purport to be any kind of expert in the field. None of us do - we're just here to (a) ask questions or (b) answer them. And it's not as simple as just getting balanced lines when possible and amps just amplifying, that's the reason he asked in the first place.

LANYD, the difference is that an "unbalanced" line has two conductors which each carry a signal (left and right). Since it's not grounded, there may be a slight difference in the impedance between channels, which is precisely what's not balanced. This can create noise. "Balanced" lines solve the problem by having an extra conductor for ground which makes the line impedances equal, i.e. balanced.

In practice, the noise on an unbalanced line is going to be virtually inaudible unless it's being amp'ed through several stages or you have a very long cable (50 ft. or more). You also can't just plug a balanced line into anything and see a benefit - you need a termination that's also balanced and I'm not sure if the HP4 has that. Most headphone amps don't.

Have a look at this link for more information. I seriously doubt that you'd need a balanced line for your headphones; that's used most often for recording things that are very noise-sensitive and have to be amplified a lot, like vocals from a mic.

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