Bartok with external headphone amp

I am looking for a little help with an external amplifier. My friend is letting me borrow his XIAudio Formula S to use with my Abyss 1266 TC. When I connect it to the bartok via xlr and the amp is turned up past 60% there is hiss present. The hiss gets worse as you turn up the volume. I opened up the amp to make sure that pin 1 and 3 are connected on the amp. The hiss is there even when the bartok is muted and there is nothing playing.

This does not happen with my other headphone amp (Cavalli Liquid Platinum) or with my speaker setup. This leads me to think that there is something going on with the amp. I am waiting on adapters so I can try the single ended output of the Bartok with the amp as it only has the xlr inputs. Has anyone run into a similar issue??

Have you tried toggling the Gain on the Amp? - seems there’s a gain button at the back). Also noticed that the sensitivity on the Amp is 1V, you might want to be sure your Bartok’s is set for 2V or 0.6V tops. Also, you might want check that both the Bartok and the Amp are connected to the same AC power point to be sure there’s no potential ground loop issue. Stick to the XLR rather than RCA.

I am having a similar issue with connecting my Bartok with my tube amp for headphones. It is a SET 300b amplifier (its unbalanced). the hiss gets worse as I increase the volume. This only appears when I connect the Bartok with XLR connectors. There is no hiss present when I connect it with RCA connectors.

I normally connect the Bartok using rca inputs to the amp but want to take advantage of the Bartoks balanced circuitry hence I opted to connect with the XLR connectors.

Could you please advise - Is it safe to connect pin 3 to pin 1 of XLR cable on the amp’s side to remove the hiss? If I do this will I in effect be removing all the advantages of going balanced?

Thanks

Indeed, you aren’t running balanced anymore if you do that; you’re likely better off running the RCA cables through and through. Unless you have a balanced front-end on your amplifier or the amplifier is balanced throughout there’s no point in using the XLR out of the Bartok.

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Thanks for your input regarding this.

Many tube SET amp owners, primarily un-balanced topology, tend to connect the XLR inputs of their amps to the XLR outputs of their DACs. They seem to be happy living with the hiss for the sonic differences they get.

Seems this problem also occurs with other DACs.

Have you tried different gain settings? That may help.

Yep, tried changing the voltage on the bartok, but did not make a difference.

With the amp, I am already in the lowest gain setting.

The hiss only appears when using XLR inputs of amps, dead quiet using RCA inputs

Hi Ted,

Please be aware that there is no inherent sound quality advantage to using “XLR” (balanced) over RCA (single ended) or vice-versa … the advantage of a balanced audio feed is in the ability for balanced audio to reject induced electrical noise over the length of the run.

It may well be that specific source devices might have “better sounding” single ended or balanced outputs but that’s down to the circuitry that drives the output itself rather than whether it’s balanced or unbalanced.

BR

Phil

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Yes that I was intending to take advantage of the XLR output in the Bartok, I have been made aware (correct me if I’m wrong) that the circuitry for the output stages in the XLR is superior to that of the RCA output.

There are two slightly different issues here. The first is what a balanced circuit is and does . Phil’s response above deals with this.

The second issue is the specific implementation of the circuit or circuits. This FAQ from this forum deals with this aspect: