Headphone Amplification

I missed this. Appears to be on sale at Audio Advisor now for $1295. 3-pin and 4-pin balanced out seems cool. Haven't read the specs yet. I assume it has that Canadian sound. BHA1_BROCHURE.pdf

I thought the King of all headphone amps would deserve his own thread. This is a beast of epic proportions, 11 power supplies, an overload of CCS and it draws close to 300W from the wall. I'll be updating this post later on with more specs about this monster. Well, here are some pics for your viewing pleasure. They are huge so may take a while to load.

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.

I am trying to decide between the Headroom BUDA+DPS and GS-X to use as a "backup" balanced solid state amp to use with HD800 and ECD-1 for those times that I don't want to fire up the tube amp (Woo Audio WA5 LE). There are advantages to both of them. For instance, BUDA+DPS is maybe slightly smaller, bit cheaper (can't members of the other site get some sort of 10% discount?), will convert SE to balanced from an unbalanced source like my SA8001 that I use to listen to the few SACDs that I own, has a shorter waiting period. However, the GS-X is fully discrete while the the BUDA is chip based, the GS-X has stepped attenuators, and Justin's work is absolutely amazing. Als…

FS: Aristaeus - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio

So I've had about a week of listening time with TTVJ's loaner Corda Opera, and tonight some people came over to hear it as well. Basically we were pretty disappointed by it: it just did not have enough power plain and simple. I tried both the HD650s and the K701s, and the Opera had trouble driving them to levels that I consider acceptable. For some of my harder hitting music, I had to use up the entire range on the volume pot on high gain to get enough dynamic swing out of the K701s (of course the K701s are dynamic to begin with). It's a little bit better with the HD650s, but the sound just reminds me of every other mid-fi SS gear I've heard: which is to say, nothing …

I thought this was an April fool at first, but apparently not! If you fancy a good laugh have a read of his review @ the other place http://www.head-fi.org/products/cavalli-audio-liquid-gold/reviews/10823 Just to whet your appetite Only Solid State Amp I've heard that Sounds Like a Hybrid: The Texture and Warmth of Tubes, but Control, Power and Precision of the Very Best of SS! From DAC or phonostage - to various musical genres! It just goes about its business and does its job better than almost every other amplifier I've heard. Perhaps the most musically engaging of them all actually - but I'm still figuring that out! Pros: Outstandingly Musical and Easy…

With the PerfectWave on the way, I now have a balanced source. My KGSS is balanced as is my McCormack DNA 1 (will be shipped for repairs Monday). I'm looking for a pre that will allow me to go balanced out to the McCormack and use a balanced loop out to the KGSS. The only one I can find in the under $2000 price range is the BAT VK-5i. Wyred 4 Sound has a preamp with 2 balanced outs. I emailed them to see if they could make one of them a loop or tape out. I know that BAT gear is supposed to be excellent so it is a possibility. I am curious if someone else knows of any other in the under $2000 range. Thanks

I just bought the SR-009 which should be here soon. I have resisted buying them forever because I never really warmed up to its sound signature when I have listened to them, even via Blue Hawaii SE. Yes, I am a lover of single-ended triode (mostly 2A3 and 45) sound. I don't listen to stuff with lots of bass of dynamic jump, so these days I'm happy listening to my Stax O2 MkI, Senn HE-60 (woody), and HE Audio 'stat via Stax transformer with my 2A3 SET or EL84 sigle-ended pentode speaker amps. SR-009 should be easier to drive than O2, so that's good, but obviously, a dedicated 'stat amp will be needed at some point. Blue Hawaii SE, hopefully with some tube, cab…

I know they don't get many (any?) mentions over here and this will probably mark me as irretrievably jejeune -- but, for the money, I've been pretty happy with the Little Dot MkIVse I picked up used on HF. Anyway, their new balanced tube amp is apparently now available at a fairly tempting $724 shipped to the U.S. and I wondered if anyone had any thoughts on the basic design? Haven't been able to locate any specs, though they explicitly say it was designed to be able to drive K1000s. Any idea what the driver tubes might be? Pity about the gold tube sockets, but what are you gonna do?

So my birthday present is finally here, the SRM-T8000. I just quickly plucked it into my computer rig with the Denafrips Ares as a source: Here I can compare directly against the Carbon CC and the as yet unrealesed new KGSSHV, budget edition. Think of this one as the 727 if Stax had any sense. Anyway, back to the T8000. The packaging is classic Stax and no complaints there. I do have some complaints about the casework though, the front panel looks awesome but who decided what to do with the rest of it? Seriously that sparckly silver paint is just horrible. Reminds me of some super cheap Chinese amps. Yeah... not great. I had a quick peek inside to…

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!

After mucho waiting and waiting, it appears that Larry at LaRocco may...I say with hesitation...may be actually readying to ship. The latest word is that "some" amps will be shipping this week with the rest soon to follow. There were supposedly 50 in the original group buy, and according to Duncan (Larry's still not talking), there are 100 ready to go. Anyway, after all this waiting, this is all I've got to go on, so here are the lastest pics/teases swiped from a post at ipastudio: All non-alignment critical parts are assembled prior to final chassis assembly on the PCB. The final aligned control and interface components are installed in the chassis, tested,…

Hey guys, Check out my review if you have the time, just got put up couple of days ago: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/headroom2/desktop.html

I've pretty much settled on the L3000 as the headphones for me (other than the K1000) and I'd like to look into comissioning a high end custom built tube amp for them. The L3000 specs from their website: Type Closed-back dynamic Driver Diameter 53 mm Magnet Neodymium Case Cherry blossoms wood, CONNOLLY leather Frequency Response 5 - 45,000Hz Maximum Input Power 2,000mW Output Sound Level 104 dB/mW Impedance 48 Ω Weight 380 g Cable 3.0 m Connector ?6.3 mm phone plug Accessories Furnished BOX So I'm probably looking for schematics that are available that I could have someone build the amp based on. Does not need to have a preamp. Headphone amp o…

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

Haven't had mine long, but first impressions are very positive. Until I get more time (and tubes) to post additional comments, here's a new Playback/AV Guide review: http://tinyurl.com/peakvolc

Hi Guys I run a KGSShv that take about an hour to warm up and sound 100% performance. Because of that I tend to leave it on all the time unless I am going away for a few days. My question, is it ok to do that and leave the headphones plugged in, or is it best to power down? The headphones would i guess get a 580v bias but no music signal during this time.

Birgir finally has his hands on the SRM727, and evidently does not like the thing at all. Extended comments hopefully coming from the big guy soon. Comments on the 300 should also come soon once he can get his fingers inside the chassis to rewire the transformer. I've come to the conclusion that the srm323 is stax's best sounding amp that is still in production.

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…

Please do tell what tubes your using and how they affected the sound and what headphones you are using with those particular tubes.

Folks, nubie here.......Been browsing the whole 20 over pages of portable amps in search of desktop amps for my future desktop rig. Have ordered HF-2 and looking to pair it with desktop amps. I listened mainly to pop (air supply, kylie, air supply, any stock, aitken, waterman arrangement), jazz (shakatak), adult contemporary(george benson, gloria estefan, everything but the girl, etc), smooth jazz (acoustic alchemy, peter white, jim brickman, etc), easy listening, slow rock (toto, journey), rock (poison). My collection is some 30% 320kbps, 25% lossless WMA and the rest 192 to 128 kbps (slowly will upgrade to lossless WMA by re-ripping my CD collection). I plan to list…

http://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreymorrison/2014/05/11/oppo-ha-1-preview If the typical Oppo penchant for high quality bang for the buck holds, this could be a contender.

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…

I recently purchased a Blue Hawaii (DIY) and it looks great. I am ensuring that all is well, and I am performing some measurements on the amplifier prior to plugging in my headphones (SR-Omega.) The amplifier was built in a single chassis and uses Headamp's boards from 2004. One thing I noticed while examining Kevin's project page for the Blue Hawaii is that it calls for +-450v and +-15v outputs on the PSU. However, the Headamp KGSS/Blue Hawaii (as labeled) supply boards seems to output +/-360v and +/-15v. This seems to be closer to the KGSS specification. Does this throw off the amplifier sections in any way? Finally, when I measures from Bias output to Ground on …