Headphone Amplification

I bought a CEC HD53R for exactly 40 000 Yen in Japan (which is around $370 USD), to pair with my Edition 9s. While it does sound nice, I have some lingering after thoughts... Unfortunately I only found one reference to this amp in this forum. I'm hoping somebody with experience with the HD53R can help me. For it's price, did I make the right choice? Are there any other headphones that magically synergizes with this amp?

Well I finally got my Max Balanced yesterday , though now I have to wait till my balanced cables and my source burn in so I cant provide any comments on the sound yet. I do like crossfeed however. Alas, no pics either as my digital camera is travelling in Europe at the moment, but it will be back in a few weeks. I was wandering if theres any way to check if my system (Esoteric DV-60, then the Max) is in phase.

Does anyone know what the polarity is of the Sonic T-Amp DC power input? TxIA...

Well here is some fresh meat for the peanut gallery. I got this off our resident gear whore Tyrion a while back in a gear swap. The Berendsen IPA 80 is from Germany and retails for about $2000 but they recently pulled out of the US market. From the website and visually there are three transformers one for the pre and one for each side of the amp. They talk about the power of the amp coming from ring emitter transistors ( I have no idea what the fuck that is). I will say this cleanly slays the Krell 400xi I owned briefly and thought sucked. The main bonus this amp presents in a killer headphone amp that is so ergonomically challenged it has me questioning the designers…

This is the 'new' McAlister EA-6, freshly returned from Peter, with a better than new rework of the circuit... tube compliment is: 1x 12BQ6 1x 6BQ6 2x 12AU7 4x 6CG7 4x 17GW6 This is with the Eastsound E5 and the HE60. Good news: This amp is great, if not spectacular when playing acoustic (Allison Krauss), classical, and some rock (Jane's Addiction, Who Ultimate Collection, and Hoobastank). Just superb. Bad news: On saturated and distorted rock (Tool '10k Days' and 'Lateralus', Jett 'Get Born' and 'Shine On', and even Velvet Revolver), I catch a raft of fuzzy distortion (almost static) in the upper guitar band and the top of percussion (cymbals)... BUT, ONL…

Well I was a little bored last night so I opened up my PrimaLuna Prologue One and was very impressed by the point-to-point wiring so I took some pictures. Lower res versions here: http://head-case.org/photos/thumbnails.php?album=6

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I was wondering what you have been paying for your 6sn7w's. I saw a pair of metal base 6sn7w's that went for $459 on ebay, and another pair, again on ebay, for almost $500 .... both buy it now. I am trying to get a current market value of these tubes. I know tkam uses them, but anyone who buys these tubes or has any input, please post .... your input is welcome.

Which pairs better with the Denon d2000 in your guys' opinions, The Hifiman EF2? or the Audio-Gd Compass. I have no amp or dac, so these will serve as both amp and dac for me driving out of a macbook pro. Which do you guys recommend? Thanks for any help.

http://www.tubedepot.com/nos-4212e.html Holy Shit! $2000 for a pair.

Hi, I want to find a headphone amp which have pre-amp funtion with balance input, any suggestion? What is the model name? thx

Got any? I am probably gonna be doing it up with an ipod classic and am looking for a portable amp that will not only ensure enough voltage but also a flat frequency response. I know the ipod isn't flat accurate by any means but I have heard that the right amp can compensate for this.

Jonokuchi, from Pete's home page. His latest single ended desktop amp, complete with boards(on his ebay store), Edcor transformer package, and Front Panel Express info and files for the enclosure. A very neat looking build. Hat's off to Pete.

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…

This maybe a very stupid question but I'd like to ask it anyway. I'd really like to have a small and portable dac/headphone amp and I'd also like to be able to use it with mah stereo, for various reasons; the obvious being that I'm not made out of money and would like less electronic gear in my apartment. Are there any valid reasons to think this would be a hysterically bad idea? enlighten this noob please That being said, I'm aware that the signal is being amplified obviously but is it THAT bad? are there any sane alternatives? The stereo is an ageing Sony 730ES and a pair of JBL 4408's so don't tell me I wont benefit from a detailed dac

I want to connect the output on my soundcard to one of the AMP800's inputs, but I don't know the best way to do this. The output on my soundcard is 3.5mm stereo, the Behringer AMP800 has two 6.3mm inputs for the left and right channels. I've been getting conflicting information, one of my friends suggests this--- 1/8 in. Stereo to Dual 1/4 in. Mono Cable http://www.zzounds.com/item--HOSCMP15 . My other friend says this cable would not work, as it would give two mono signals, not a left channel and a right channel. Thanks for any help on this.

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

Hello I am pretty new here and am seeing some really impressive knowledge on this site. I looked but did not find anything on changing the voltage from 100 to 117 on an RSM717. I saw a post on the 727 which someone also said was similar. It looked like on that, the leads were cut from the transformer and that did not look like fun to do. I can measure resistance, voltage, etc, but don't have the expertise to do what some of you guys can do. If there are step by step instruction (esp with photos) I can do it. I don't see a lot of posts that are dumbed down to that level though. I also was wondering if there are any mods to be made on a 727 that would make it a b…

Hello all, I have this unit, but it stopped working so I opened it up. It seems that in right channel are shorted mosfets on output stage. But LEDs are not lit on both channel so I need to check it more. I started drawing schematic from the board. Since this is only one sided pcb, it was easy. But there is one thing I don't really understand. It is the cascode pair of 2SA1699. It should be that emitter is connected to the drain of the 2sj109 and output is at collector. But there it is connected differently. Or there is something I don't see. If we look on the board, there is drain of the 2sj109 and it is connected to the base of 2sa1699 according to …

I'm mulling over the options. The source will be a laptop, possibly a docking station with a Lynx Two in it. I'll probably order a headphone out of the Headroom options to go along with it. Any opinions? I'll probably be going with Home modules either way, and speccing the DAC as a flexibility option. What does the ~$1200 difference boil down to?

Or, as they call it on Head-Fi, the Xiansheng. Alright, I found the tube compliment as being 1 6N3, 2x 6922, 1 6Z4 and 1 6N1. Meh, the only ones of those that I have are the 6922's...and not even that many of those... My boss just bought one (under my recommendation, so there's a little bit of pressure to do well, here). It's distorting. My first guess would be one of the tubes, but he does have a whole new system (using the MF A308 as transport, to long digital cable to cheap DAC to short ICs to Xiang Sheng to Sony MDR-7506/-V6's [i forget which, but it's actually a nice match]), so there's a possibility that it's something else, but I figure: check the tubes first…

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampstube&1194912658 Looking at the parts used and the design it sounds like it might be kinda neat. Custom tango iron for 2.5k? Maybe I'll grab this for a K1000 amp. Some of direct coupled design? Yeah okay I really don't know enough to know if this is any good ;p

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?

Hi guys, I wasn't quite sure where to put this thread since the DA10 is a source, but it has a headphone-out. Since I'm referring to the headphone-out, I guess it goes in the amps section. So. Has anyone tried the DA10's headphone out with a high-end A-T? Actually, I'm basically looking for a $1000 source + amp setup for high end A-T's so that if a 45th anniversary headphone comes out, I'll be ready. (And if not, I'll just get a W5k.) I can't afford the matching amps (HA-5000 for example) or else I would only need to look for a source. The DA10 is just one of the many options I'm thinking about. Well, I don't want a setup along the lines of Zhaolu -> Dynahi.

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.