Headphone Amplification

not sure if this warrants a completely new thread, but i'm hearing this "bing" noise whenever i touch my volume knob. is this normal or should i get this looked at? i did just switch in a new gain tube, so i'm not sure if it's that.

Not too sure if anyone's seen this design before but it seems pretty amazing http://headwize.com/ubb/showpage.php?fnum=3&tid=7227 What do you think guys?

Done by a 3rd party who happens to own both units. Someone I trust who has no hammer to pound with. I see no reason not to post this, as it should be clearly duplicatable by just about anyone. http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/picovspredator.htm

So, would it be possible to have the gain lowered on a Pico so those with IEM's can enjoy more of the amps sonic characteristics? I would also like to have more volume control for IEM's. What I have gathered from home amplifiers (ex. Macintosh) is that the less gain and more volume or (the other way around) really has a dif effect on sound. Is it possible to change this or is the gain set in stone? I really think you can get a better taste of the sound of a headphone amp When the gain is set propperly for your headphones. Witha portable like Pico, I think users will usually use the same headphone. Way back 7-8 years ago, the META42 and penguin builders always asked wha…

I'm just wondering how big the worldwide market for portable headphone amps is. In october I bought my first - a Tomahawk, and it's serial # 697. With reading the various hifi websites, I'd guess that the Tomahawk has at least 30-40% of the market, or it did until the Pico / Predator came out. I live in London and have never seen anyone else with a portable amp, despite the fact that millions of commuters use portable audio. I've actually seen more Ultimate Ears 10-pros (1) than headphone amps! Of course this is hardly empirical; I've never met anyone else with Etymotic phones and I know they are relatively popular. By that very rough estimate, there would be 2000 - 30…

So, uh yea. I really like my newly acquired m^3. Its the best amp that I had a chance to own. So uh yea, its a great amp. I like it I know this thread is :kitty: :kitty: :kitty: :kitty: :kitty:

Sorry, cannot wade through the lovefest thread. - How big is it - Custom paint? - Where do I get it from and product details in a single webpage if poss. Thanks

Hi guys! I've done some extensive researching in the past few days to find an amp that would be a good match for Senn HD600 and I've pretty much settled my choice on the M^3. The problem is, there seems to be an incredible number of configurations and upgrades possible and I'm no DIY guru so it's hard to know exactly what I want and what's the best I can get for the price I want to pay. I want to spend about 500$-600$ and my source for the moment is a modest M-Audio Transit USB (next upgrade after the amp ). What's your suggestions for the parts? Also, I need to find a builder, so I'll take your recommendations on that.

Well, since I'm technically a MOT* I'll just post a pic: My impression is that it's orange. *MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOT MOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMOTMO…

First A Little Background Trafomatic is a ten employee privately held audio, industrial, medical equipment and transformer manufacturer located in Mladenovac, in the Republic of Serbia. As noted in another thread, the transformers in the Trafomatic line are manufactured in house by Trafomatic but Trafomatic also provides transformers for Korato tube amplifiers, another audio manufacturer whom they declined to disclose, DIYers as well as power conditioners. Head One is their transformer coupled headphone amplifier employing two Russian 6S45P-E triode tubes and one EZ80 as the rectifier tube. A brief internet search found the three tubes costing from $45 to $90 dollars to…

Let me first begin by describing my background. I'm no audiophile, in fact I never had a CD player or even a casette player when I was a bit younger. It wasn't until a few years ago that I bought my first mp3 player. I went through a bunch of very low end headphones, most were only suitable for very casual listening and more PC gaming, and nothing more. Recently I decided to treat myself, took a risk and bought the HD555s. For the price I got them for, they sound excellent. Better than anything else I've owned or have tried in recent memory. But I can't help that I'm not getting the most out of them. Right now I'm running a PC with the original Audigy 1 soundca…

Hi, I'm new. I'm looking into incrementally putting together an affordable setup and was hoping to get some advice from you guys on what I should get and in what order. Background: I listen to mostly indie rock and jazz off of a macbook (external hard drive). I just recently got a pair of sr225s and i'd like to put them to a little better use. My next purchase will be in the $300-$400 range and then it'll be about month or so between purchases, so I'd like to buy things in an order that will make the most difference. I know it's not a lot of money (and i don't have the greatest cans in the world) but you gotta start somewhere. Thanks in advance for the help...

Here's Step 4 of my 12-Step Plan: How To Stop People From Laughing At Your Amplification. Step 1 was simple: Join the head-case forum. Be polite and humble. Try not to cry too much when people laugh at you and post mean things. :'( Step 2 was to refrain from posting too much at head-case, in case someone points out your inadequate amplification. Sure, it's good, clean entertainment for everyone but you don't want to be the butt of the jokes all the time. You can continue posting at Head-Fi as much as you want, your posts will blend in nicely with all the other idiot posts there. Step 3 was to divert attention from your amps by posting exclusively about headphone…

Well, I just joined up here today I'm also kpeezy on head-fi and I have a little question. I'm looking to combine my turntable setup and my PC setup. The plan is to get a phono pre-amp and a desktop amp (and something to switch between sources depending on the desktop amp). I'm really not sure about which specific components would work best with my headphones though. I'll update my sig soon enough but I have HD580s, SR225s, and K240 Sextetts. I listen to mostly indie rock (Wilco, Pavement, Spoon, etc.). I really just now got around to giving this merger serious thought and found out about this forum at the same time so I thought it would be a nice ice-breaker Than…

I couldn't decide if this was a DIY thing or not, but I'm going to post this here since it also involves tube-configuration questions and most folks might not read a DIY thread. So my lawyer has purchased an MPX3 that includes the 5687 adapters. As a part of my yearly retainer I will be attempting to add preamp outputs to this amp. The question came up during negotiations as to what the best tube combo would be given that this device will be much more preamp than headphone amp. So what say you, masters of the SP domain? Also, can anyone come up with a plausible reason that I can't just tap the headphone output for the preamp output? I've read other SP modding thread…

Over on an other forum, there are 210 pages of posts from people who are wiating 6-10 months for amps made by Xin and then sending them back to get modded and waiting another 6-10 months. I have these questions: 1. Has anyone heard an Xin and what do they sound like? 2. What do they cost? 3. Is this an amp for which there are no close substitutes at the price, and that explains why people are waiting so long? (Sort of the SP explanation for waiting)? 4. If not, then why are they (or you) waiting so long without doing anything about it?

My Rockhopper Audio β22 has arrived! I have to re-arrange and adjust my rack shelves since I didn't leave quite enough vertical space when I last adjusted the shelves. Well, I'm going to go set it up now!

Earlier today I came across the pictures from ETF '07. http://www.dhtrob.com/etf/index.php?start=23 This is a picture of a totally out there headphone amplifier using transmitting tubes. Those tubes are around 7" tall, and the plate dissipation is up to 100W. For a pair of headphones. And though it's not a headphone amp, this is just stunning.

Well, I had to send in the red hat proto to craig to fix. Unfortunately, it is deemed "unfixable" and Craig refunded back my money. So I'm ampless. I will probably end up getting the balance discrete he is coming out with, but he gave me a time frame of late January. Knowing craig it will probably be a couple of months after. So in looking for somewhat affordable options that I can use now and sell later when its time to get the balancing act from EC, i thought of woo audio. Affordable and KG has had nice things to say. The woo audio 6 is a transformer coupled amp that uses the 6DE7 tubes for driver/power and a 5ar4 for tube rectification. The only question would be ho…

Man this is a killer amp and as many of you may know I am one fickle motherfucker when it comes to gear. Having gone through a number of amps this year I am really struck by this amp. It sounds absolutely amazing with the balanced HD2s and RS1s. It does a wonderfull job with the k1000s as well, it is super linear without sounding dry at all. To refresh folks on what this amp is and the story, I had been in talks with Craig to design a balanced amp after hearing the Zana. After several months he came up with an amp that used a 12ax7 driver and 6c41cs as output tubes with my choice of Tango or Electra print output trannies. So after I demoed the amp in SoCal Craig shi…

i've seen a couple of these on sale recently, and was wondering if anybody has any impressions of this amp. google doesn't turn up much, except some HF threads which, because of the reshuffled urls, lead to dead links. i remember reading somewhere that it shares the same circuit as the RA-1, which in turn has often been referred to as a glorified Cmoy. i'm not sure what to make of that, so if anyone can enlighten me, it would be much appreciated. *and for anybody who might be interested, the person auctioning the one on eBay is also auctioning a pair of RS-1s. The picture of the HPA-1 shows a pair of RS-1s with the brown leather headband beside them, so i assume it is…

How slow is SinglePower: http://www.head-case.org/index.php/topic,2031.150.html Preamp discussion (split from this topic): http://www.head-case.org/index.php/topic,2665.0.html edit: moved the discussion to speakers because it was about preamps.

I very much like the "truth" of the K-701s and I also love the smooth sound of WWII era 6SN7GT tubes as outputs in my SP MPX3 Slam SE. So, I have needed to find hi-gain input tubes. The 12AV7 family of tubes work pretty well as inputs, but they lack the gain to drive the 701s really well, I think. So, in my experimentation I have gone up as high 5751s with good success, but recently settled on the 12AT7WA (Brimar, Sylvania, and Raytheon) as an input with Raytheon 6SN7GT flat black plates, NU Grey Glass, and Sylvania Bad Boys as outputs. Try this tube as an input with the 6SN7GTS. The various models all sound very different, but this combo sounds very good with K-701s. …

This amp just showed up on "the other web site" Does anyone have an opinion on this amp? What are the other tubes worth? http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f42/fs-singlepower-mpx3-slam-269408/ For the same money i could have this.. http://www.headphone.com/products/headphone-amps/the-desktop-line/2007-headroom-portable-desktop-amp.php thanks for putting up with the stuuupid newb. Lee Ross

Somebody save this guy. Anyone who flies an airplane should be concerned about fires.