Headphone Amplification

I had a fun 20 mins chatting with Mikhail, speccing up a high voltage Supra for my newly acquired R10's. After saying 'yes' to most of the options (mostly having Blackgates all around), two things that were sticking points for me were the Plitron transformer ($900 vs $250 for an upgraded Supra Transformer) and Audio Note coupling caps (again around $7-900 - bit hazy here, vs $360 for V-Cap Coupling Caps). My question for those who have been able to do a comparison, is what difference does a Plitron transformer or Audio Note coupling caps make and is the extra cost worth it? If you had to choose one upgrade, which would it be? I'd appreciate your thoughts on this …

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 was wondering if anyone knew the going rate for a used ARC PH3 phonostage in a good condition? I've been thinking of selling it and replacing it with a solid state phonostage since it's not exactly the quietest phonostage. I'm wondering if I can resolve some of the noise issue by replacing the tubes, but I know very little about the design of PH3 and 6922 tubes it uses. EDIT - I've been looking on A'Gon, but haven't seen any PH3 on there of late.

I found a post by "morphsci" listing his ES-1 options in his thread titled "Custom ES-1 about to find its new home" on that other site. 1). Power Transformers Plitron Custom Toroidal 2). Cardas Silver Solder surcharge 3). Cardas Audio Wiring 4). Audio Note Silver Foil in oil coupling capacitors 5). 4 Channel GoldPoint Attenuator 6). Solen Plate Voltage Input Capacitor 7). Black Gate Power Capacitors Stage I . Black Gate Cathode bypass capacitors ES 9). Dual Umbilical cord upgrade for maximum separation 10). Quad Regulators for maximum separation Other than these options, plus maybe some extra inputs and preamp outputs, what other options would be nice to ha…

I'm always intrigued by a full line of products from one manufacturer that can pretty much handle all your audio needs. As much praise as I've read about the Opus 21, I'm surprised to have never even heard of the S30 Integrated Amplifier and the XS "Extra Sources"..., um, box thing, which has an MC and MM phono stage, additional inputs including USB, an FM/AM tuner (!!!!!!), and a headphone amplifier. Can't find much about these two components around the world wide internet. Anybody ever seen them, heard them, or read a review of them?

http://tubecad.com/2007/08/blog0117.htm Woo! I wonder how it would do with Grados.

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?p=3213610#post3213610 Congrats Stephen!!

Hey Kevin: how is this amp progressing? Last I read you had build a proto and seemed happy with it. Was that last board layout tested? I'd like to give a hand testing if needed.

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

I am looking at some new output tubes to try in my latest idea. The 1626 looks good. A low mu and lower power output tube so if the amp is transformer coupled I will get a good half to three quarter of a watt. Not to much .... not to little and only $5 a piece. I have a lot of 6S4A's and 6P14P-EV's but I want a cool looking coke bottle shaped tube. I have some coke bottle shaped pentodes like the 6Y6G .... and they have the advantage that they have the same pinout as a bunch of other pentodes. But the 1626 is a true triode like the 6S4A and will likely sound better; although you never know. But do I need to break the mold and start using a true pentode .... or atleast …

Lets talk about the Moon Audio Luna, a headphone amplifier. All of the pictures, features, available model information, and specifications were taken from the Moon Audio website. The Moon Audio Luna headphone amplifier marries the resolving power of vacuum tubes to the very highest quality audio transformers to bring nuanced, dynamic sound to headphones. The Luna has been designed to minimize audible (as opposed to measured) distortion and allow the subtle details and dynamic contrasts of recorded music to pass unaltered to your headphones. The Moon Audio Luna uses vacuum tubes and Lundahl audio transformers to achieve the goal of giving you all of the m…

So I go to case up my M^3 today, and I snap the volume pot's shaft. Yes I snapped a shaft. Dammit, so for the fuck of it I tried to epoxy that shit back into place. Game over for my RK27. Fuck. So I fire up my VanTOTL tonight, to discover my only 6AS7 has decided that about 10 hours of use was enough, and one of the triodes is dead. At least I have a backup 6080. *sigh* Amp maintenance isn't my idea of fun spending.

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?preatube&1192058776 I'm not sure what it is, or what tubes those are...but it does look funky enough to be a "collector's" amp.

everything considered should be under $150... preferably under $100 to buy or build. some amps of up to $300 in cost to build or buy may be considered if TRULLY worth the extra dough... but try to keep the recomendations under the first list of requirements. also, list what phones and IEMs the amps pair well with.

Ahoy mateys! Paging jpak & hirsch, and anyone else who cares to chime in. Looks like I've got a touch of the microfonick in the left channel. Don't notice it at all when music is playing, but when I plug in the cans I can hear it, and after the cans are plugged in, I can tap the volume knob and hear it. No worries though, gave me an excuse to crack open the SHA and see what was going on inside. First, off topic, this amp is dusty as hell, boy. What is a safe way to get rid of this dust? Just some standard compressed air (pc duster)? But on topic, the tubes that were in there were some JAN Phillips 6922s, which sounded fine, but of course I'd like to experi…

Okay. I've been applying to new apartments and they keep asking me about my stuff (Berkeley people are notoriously stressing over conservation and such). The thing is that my rig keeps freaking people out: i use alot of electricity and many power cords and shit. At minimum i use: 1 outlet for my music hard drive, 1 outlet for my sound card, 1 outlet for my transport, 1 outlet for my dac, and 1 outlet for my Zana Deux. This is bad... very bad. It doesn't look good and such. The thing is that I want to say away from making me rig into a "benchmark dac-1 with usb." or worse a corda opera. If i do decide to consolidate, I want something that's gonna be the shit. here ar…

Since changing up my work rig, the Lunchbox is kind of in limbo with me right now... I'm not sure if it's staying or going. But I was reading Skylab's Lunchbox II impressions "over there," and was interested if anyone here had tried rolling tubes with it. It seems as though the Western Electric 396A and/or Sylvania 2C51are direct swaps for the 6N3P and the Electro-Motive 6FC7 is a direct swap for the 6N24P, and I've read nothing but positive reviews of the results in the LB & the EC-01. I ordered some from the TubeDepot, as I figured $30 wasn't a big chance to take, but I'm curious what to expect. IMO, the LB offers a pretty impressive bang for the buck, and i…

So give me the scoop. I love the Dynahi sound, but I've never heard the Dynalo. I read an old thread over at *website named censored by moderation team*, and it stated that roughly the -lo is intended for lower impedance phones, while the -hi is intended for higher impedance phones, but that really both low and high impedance phones seem to perform fantastically out of both. My Dynahi is just as kickass with my HD650 as my HP2. Has anyone ever done any lo/hi shootouts, or can make any general comments on their general sound signatures? Thanks for your time!

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?

Has anyone seen this headphone amp: http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AURAUD I couldn't find the website for the manufacturer, and Head-Fi has very little information.

I'm not going to bother with captions... no need.

Sold, alas.

I know these are both DIY amps and they all have different sounds depending on how theyre built, but I'm looking for a warmish SS amp with a good amount of bass for my 225s that delivers enough current to open the phones up. I'm trying to spend as little as possible (under $300 but hopefully around $200) and usually DIY beats commercial amps in terms of bang per buck. So which amp should I get?

hi. Okay, here is the low-down, I'm borrowing the F1 from Humanflyz. I connect the F1 to my ZD as a pre and then the K1000. However, I get a hum. where is it coming from? Well, i switch sources... that's not it. I turn the volume all the way up on the ZD and it's still the same (meaning it doesn't originate with the ZD). The only other option is that the F1 is the cause. Since i didn't hear it at Mike's, i'm sure I must have caused it. the issue here is whether the problem is caused at the "power" source (since i'm connecting it to a general 5 outlet power strip) or the PC (since it's just a standard computer Power cord). The other option is that i may be gett…

Just because my turntable only has one headphone out, this prevents me from having to pull cables every time I want to listen to a different amp. Does a preamp actually do anything to a signal, or is it just a fancy switchbox? This has always confused me.