Headphone Amplification

I've been intrigued by this unit for some time and figure it would be a nice office source/amp and perhaps serve as a backup should something happen to part of my main rig. I know the dac is well respected, but how does it do as a headphone amp? How do the 650s sound straight out of the XLR outs on it? The other option I'm considering is Justins new mighty might but that's several months off. Guess I could wait, but patience is not my strong suit. Btw, what do the Mini DAC's go for on the used market these days? Rarely see on on 'Gon, but they do turn up occasionally. If anyone has extensive time with the apogee, I'd appreciate your thoughts and comparisons to other amps/…

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.

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…

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?

http://www.6moons.com/news/news.html About a third of the way down the page, an October 7th entry, any notice this or know anything about it? Sure looks puuurty Unfortunately the websites product pages links don't seem to be working http://www.trafomaticaudio.com/products.php

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…

This is something I've been thinking about for quite some time now, why is it that some headphones are automatically assumed to require super-expensive over the top amps while others aren't? The examples I'm specifically thinking of are the Senn 580/6x0 and AKG K701 along with Grados like the RS-1. As most of you have likely heard by now, everyone "knows" that the Senns & AKG "need" the best amp money can buy, and if the sound isn't quite right it's always the fault of the amp because it's not good enough. I've also noticed that scores if not hundreds of people own $1000+ amps for the above headphones. On the other side of the coin we have (John) Grados, everyon…

The impressions will come late tonight or sometime tomorrow after I get around to listening to it in a short while. I'm over at Roam's place and we just finished de-fucking one of my tube amps.

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...

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…

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 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. …

I have some pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/20989038@N04/sets/72157603216939944/ I ordered at RMAF2007 after a short audition. I currently have an SP MPX3 SE Slam, a MAD HD1, a McAlister Preamp/headphone amp (PL 12, I think). I don't think my hearing is good enough to really distinguish the important differences between the three, and I am also not sure I can put what I hear into words, but I will review the SBH after I get it broken in and used to it both as a headphone amp and a preamp. I have excessive gain with both my MPX3 and PL 12 preamp sections. The SBH will have lo and hi gain operation. It can also be operated as both a preamp and headphone amp…

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.

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…

OK, getting right to the point: My experience has primarily been solid state amps to date, but I am itching to get a tube amp into my portfolio. My headphone stable has been whittled down to: L3000 (my pinnacle...erhh Barry Bonds??!!) w5000 (sold first pair, then reacquired 2nd...yes assinine behavior but I like the w5000...) HD650 (initially unimpressed, but really impressed the longer I use them) RS-1 (my first intro to hi-end headphones, sold off all other Grados including PS-1 and HHF-1, but still attached to RS-1...) few other phones, but they're secondary Of course, there isn't a "one-shot" magic solution, but any suggestions on a complimentary tube amp…

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.

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.

Hi all, New guy here, just like to introduce myself. More of a speaker guy myself, but have recently discovered the virtues of a good headphone. Anyway, was wondering if anyone around here has had experience with the 6H30 tube, using a pair of sov's atm but im not liking the reliability of them (might be bad batch dunno). So was eyeing the electro-harmonix gold pin version, however some sources suggest they have a different pin config. I'm sus of this, anyone know weither this is true or not?

Yes, I've finally took delivery of my Diablo. I just picked it up a few minutes ago, it's charging at the moment, so I don't have too much to report. I'll take some pics and report on it's performance out of the box in a few hours.

While my K340's sound produces an instant grin even when powered from my mini-dac 1/4" output. I am looking now for an amp so that can let the K340's sing My initial budget is $300-$500 (used or new) I'll be feeding the amp from XLR out's of my apogee mini-dac.

I just saw this on Lloyd's website, and he has a newsletter describing the various technical changes that went into the new model: http://hollowstate.netfirms.com/Branches5.pdf

I'm new here. Just bought a Shure SE530 this week on impulse. Actually I was a little tired of the Etys during my last business trip. They are just a tad too bright and lean for my taste. Anyways, I was trying to plug the SE530 to my various amps at home last night and got a really loud buzz coming out of both sides when the volume was set at 0. Today, I tried it with my portable Headroom Airhead and samething happened again. I plugged the SE530 directly into my iAudio X5 and they sounded great. I checked Shure's website and in the FAQ section it says that it is not necessary, but OK to, plug these into a headphone amp. I did some search here, and others have use headp…

A number of us have been contacting Hagerman over the past year or so regarding a SET headphone amp design. He said he'll do something about it independently. Oh snap. It's coming. Ultra excited. http://www.hagtech.com/castanet.html