Not something that would be my primary source of listening but where my Atom HE is sitting I am very close to our roof terrace. Though fitted with a decently long cable, my Sennheiser HD660s headphones can only just just get outside the door.
BUT, a while ago I purchased a reasonably good quality headphone extension cable. Probably again as long as the fitted cable on the headphones themselves.
So the question to the “headphone amp / cable resistance and all other factors gurus” is, if I were to further extend the Sennheisers to be able to listen in the open air outside, would this cause any undue strain on my electronics? Or is it just fine?
Have you thought about buying a replacement headphone cable, but balanced? I imagine this might not only improve performance but also work better over a longer distance.
No not at all. Never owned one before so somehow I thought the headphones themselves were unbalanced and not that you could replace your cable to unbalanced. Shows what I know…
This is a great idea that I will certainly investigate. Guess the deciding factor would be if the cost outlay would be worth it on the price brackets where my headphones are at. Do you think it would be worthwhile, or better to upgrade the whole setup?
I reckon it’s definitely worthwhile. I made my own inexpensive balanced cable for my HD600s by just shortening and re-terminating an HD650 lead. That lead is inexpensive but it’s a nice upgrade on the original HD600 one. IIRC as originally supplied it is 3m long. How long do you need to go?
Bear in mind that the longer you go, the heavier the overall pull/drag on your headphones will be and I imagine there will also be a performance cost, although balanced should probably minimise that.
Definitely something I am going to investigate then!
But here is the conundrum. 99% of the time or even more I am going to be sitting approximately 40cm from the HE. In fast I sit so close that I activate the motion sensor inadvertently sometimes.
So that perhaps tells met to invest in a short unbalanced cable for quality and test the extended run of balanced for the odd occasion I want to sit outside and stare at the stars. I guess I need about 5m of cable to do that. As long as I know that by going to about 6 meters (which I think the combined length of the Sennheiser cable and extender combined will be) can’t harm the HE in any way. If the test sounds fine I can live with it for the odd occasion.
An extension won’t put a strain on the electronics, but I have found that the use of long extension cables of modest wire gauge can impact on sound quality.
I thought so as well but better find out before just plugging in.
Guess it won’t hurt to give it a test then. Pointless to spend a lot of cash on a long balanced run if I will barely use it. Rather spend on a short balanced run to improve most of the listening time.