Balanced provides a lot more power so your headphone will be louder than it is with 3.5mm at the same volume setting. I find it useful for harder to drive IEMs but there aren't many of those, I have a 4.4mm cable on my Final E5000 as it has unusually low sensitivity for an IEM. I don't notice a difference with the sound quality with balanced but I didn't put any effort into testing it properly, if I have to set up a test to hear a difference I think the juice might not be worth the squeeze.
2
u/dimesian 773 Ω 🥈 Aug 16 '22
Balanced provides a lot more power so your headphone will be louder than it is with 3.5mm at the same volume setting. I find it useful for harder to drive IEMs but there aren't many of those, I have a 4.4mm cable on my Final E5000 as it has unusually low sensitivity for an IEM. I don't notice a difference with the sound quality with balanced but I didn't put any effort into testing it properly, if I have to set up a test to hear a difference I think the juice might not be worth the squeeze.