Benchmark seems to be taking a very narrow viewpoint on this. At the lower and middle segments of the market, sure there's a good debate on whether your money is better allocated in towards a single-ended or balanced design (probably leaning towards single ended in most cases). On the higher side of headphone-dom, there's no question in my mind that the best headphone amplifiers are balanced. And furthermore, the best headphones are electrostats, which require specialized balanced amplifiers to drive them.
Of course using high quality parts, good circuit design, and extremely tight matching is of paramount importance for a balanced amp build to be worthwhile.
I remember when their DAC 1 w/ headphone module was new thing being hyped and wow...I can't possibly describe how underwhelming that sound was. I'll take the preachings of Kevin Gilmore any day over Benchmark.
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