Headphone Amplification

My mother in law wants headphone amp recommendations to incorporate into her speaker rig, and, having never had the opportunity to A/B different head amps (one of these days I must travel to a meet...), I'd like to hear what advice head-casers suggest I give her. Present Gear CD transport: Esoteric P-10 DAC: Esoteric D-10 Headphones: currently HD555s, but likely to upgrade to HD600s or HD650s. I'd like to keep things solid state because I visit frequently with a toddler (plus one more on the way), and her stereo rack is within his reach. I'm not a fan of her speaker rig's sound, but I suspect that's likely due to speaker placement more than anything else (spe…

I met Donald North over at an audio dealer's house a few months ago. Nice guy. That's the extent of my involvement with DNA. I guess this is his first headphone amp. I'll copy what he wrote me: When we met I talked about developing my own tube headphone amp. The design is now done and operational. I'm calling it the DNA Sonett. It uses the 6H30 dual triode with transformer loading for the audio amplification. Power supply is tube rectified using the 5AR4 and choke filtered. I played the prototype for Elliot and thought it sounded very good. I have also played it for some friends who liked it and placed orders. The audio circuitry uses no coupling capacitors or …

This is my fist posting for this forum. I hope it’s to your liking ! Apart from the audio qualities, I am also interested in the technical qualities of equipment. So my posts sometimes will be a bit technical. Just skip the uninteresting bits. If that is almost all: so much the better. That way you have more time left for enjoying the music ;-) Quite recently I finally managed to obtain a Stax SRA-12S pre-amplifier with built-in ES headphone amplifier. According to the previous (first) owner the amp got very hot. Well, since it is supposed to run quite hot, I was not alarmed and bought the SRA-12S unseen (well…. just a photo). Unfortunately one channel of the …

I just checked Craig's site...

So I was reevaluating my two-channel system and while things were moved about I decided to remove some of the accumulated dust. I was using one of those swiffers on the ES-1 and I guess it is too forceful an instrument as the green glass covering the readout from the digital volume fell into the chassis. So I am going to open it up and remove the glass and re-affix it to the chassis. I realize I need to turn it over and separate the bottom from the top. There appears to be only 4 screws (2 front and 2 back), of the approximately 1 billion screws in the chassis, that actually hold the top and bottom together. This seems way to easy, am I missing something here? The pie…

Check it out, people! (click the pic) Not yet named officially but called the WES (Woo ElectroStatic) for now.

silvercore - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio Looks pretty beastly but it's probably too expensive to really be interesting for me.

Was looking over at HF and saw this: Styleaudio's Topaz and Emerald DAC/AMP Sale!! - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio :palm::palm:

What are your opinions on the Corda Symphony? There's a thread on the other site where its been reported that coaxial input to the DAC causes the signal to drop out. This is caused by the SPDIF receiver chip resetting when new signal is present. (takes a few ms) Optical is fine tho. And the SPDIF receiver chip was upgraded from the Opera's to alleviate the problems with the Opera's clicking noise when no signal was present.

I've seen a few Cary SLI 80s go for pretty decent prices on audiogon lately. Been thinking about picking one up to use as a headphone amp and to drive a pair of monitors in a secondary rig. Does anyone have experience with it as a headphone amp? Is it good with all phones? Or just low or high impedance phones?

Pictures of the A-10 have been released. Looks interesting to say the least... http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f38/10-thunderbolt-ll-fully-balanced-electrostatic-amp-pre-amp-417185/

The page on the new Ultra DAC would appear to establish that a companion amp is also on the way. Can anyone with better eyes than me make out what the leftmost switch is labeled? If it's indeed "Rear Outputs", I'm going to do a little happy dance!

A couple of pictures from Craig to get it started: Very Moth-esque.

Mentioned in the NYC 3/21 Meet thread at HF: Woo Audio 22 Fully Balanced Headphone Tube Amplifier Nice looking amp, I look forward to reading impressions of it. Damn, there's gonna be some really sweet gear at the meet, I envy the NY contingent... Any tube experts' opinions of the tubes used? And why are all these amp vendors coming out with hot new stuff in the current economy?

ZDT <- This is very similar to the Nautilus amp that he had prototyped but better (Partial Silver Electraprint transformers last time I heard). I think it's a steal at this price versus the price of a new Zana Deux.... anyone on board or considering?

I am thinking, just maybe, of switching back to K1000, but not sure if I could do it, because of financial issue. That's why I would like to see if I can find some reasonable priced tube speaker amp for them. Budget within USD 1500. I was thinking of Cary Xciter, but he is to pricey if not say more, however the tube rolling options of it is quite nice. Let see what you all think of that guys/girls THX

Hi, I have one amp with those and there may be room for improvement: it uses some Elma electrolytic of 4700mF (and 16V rating if memory serves) on each channel life wire. They seem to block around 25V of DC (rough measure before the cap) so it does not seem a good idea to just bypass them (just joking ). I am looking for some advice, there is quite room for alternatives and even 'groups' of caps if someone gives me a good reason to get rid of those electrolytics... Thanks!

Hi guys. First of all, I'm not trolling! Just curious. I've noticed several threads here that contain a lot of "anger?" towards Ray. I skimmed some of them, but haven't been able to glean anything very meaninful, except about someone's table getting slightly singed by one of his amps, a rumor about a house fire caused by one of his amps, a lot of angry back and forth personal insults, which model of Terminator is superior, etc. Another thing that I find curious is that Ray seems to enjoy a "celebrity" status on Head-Fi, but not here. So why the discrepancy? I'm curious mainly because I've been eyeing one of his amps, and just want to have all relevant information a…

Audio-gd Compass Impressions, not a review! Gear: Laptop, Foobar and MonkeyMedia, ASIO4all, AD900, HD650, Audio-gd Powe Cable. Hey all Head-Case. First off, nice to see so many of the excellent posters I respected at the other headphone forum here. I wondered where you all had gone, I mean once in a while I'll see a blue moon post, but not enough! I had a wonderful opportunity to be among the first 18 testers to own the newest headphone solution from Audio-gd. For, I feel this is by far the best option for me as a beginner into headphone amps and dedicated DACs. Audio-gd is a small company out of Beijing China, lead by their lead designer, Mr. He Qinghua,…

OK, so I have had for a long time now issues with some sort of interference in my system which manifests as a background high-pitch noise that is fatiguing after awhile. I have tried many things to assuage the problem because its source has been unknown. Thought it might just be digital harshness, the headphones, etc. Anyway, I got some bendix 2C51 from luvdunhill recently and popped them in to my SDS-XLR (gotta live with what I got ) and when music started there was an intermittent static noise in both tubes. No music, no static. I thought it might be bad tubes. Anyway, this morning, for whatever reason, I decided to cup my hand around the tube (between driver &a…

Can someone explain to me what constitutes a discrete op amp? Secondly, does this discrete op amp actually offer better performance than a typical op amp? KG, Nate .... anyone?

Also posted on H-F: Review of the SPL Phonitor Introduction: Last year I started to read about this new amplifier from SPL with its exotic crossfeed and I had to hear it. SPL America generously agreed to send me a Phonitor sample for review on Head-Fi and in short I am extremely impressed with the amplifier. On top of that the Phonitor has an amazing fully adjustable crossfeed circuitry that does an amazingly effective job at recreating a speaker setup. That

I was reading a lively thread on HF (something about rudi and a new amp) and realized that my knowledge of measurements and most things to do with engineering is sorely lacking. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions about learning about the engineering aspects of amps,etc (ie good design). I am mainly looking for a basic understanding to become a better consumer (or be less of an idiot). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

See the inside of that new ALO (Amphora) bullshit?

Hi. This is a $6000 TTVJ tube amp: I'm not gonna say it's arm gnawingly ugly, but even Mr. Takei gets a chuckle at that faceplate. Yet, for some odd reason the headphone cognoscenti lust after it madly. One might start to get the idea that Todd has some kind of wacky function-over-form philosophy. Maybe he should he should start to imitate the Denver business model.