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Headphones share a common connection on the non-driven side of the driver
elements. You can see this by looking at a headphone plug; the left channel
connection is at the tip, the right channel connection is the ring, and the common
connection were talking about is the remainder of the plug shaft, called the sleeve.
The problem is that the summed left and right channel return current will develop a
signal across the series resistance of the common return path, which muddies the
stereo presentation on headphones with cross-talk. (When evaluating headphones,
one thing you can look for is having the join of the left and right common return at the
plug rather than within the headphones.) It is this headphone connector found on all
headphones that makes it impossible to drive the return side of the headphone
coils with the separate left and right inverted signals of a fully balanced amplifier.
What’s so special about a fully-balanced headphone amp?
