Headphone Amplification

So I chose to buy the AKG 450, however I saw a review that said these headphones should be listened with a 320kpbs and my music is only 256. Will it really be a big deal? Would buying a portable amp for it fix it? I also listen to classical. Also, what amp should I buy? I am looking for under $70 I thought about the Fiios E11. Any other reccomendations? Please help!

I haven't really kept up with the headphone amp market much as of late. I started taking a look around to see what tube amps are currently available and there really doesn't seem to be all that many. The Woo Audio stuff has always looked interesting to me as they seem to be very well built and priced pretty well. Does anyone have any thoughts or impressions on the WA2 or the WA6SE?

Todd the Vinyl Junkie just announced a loaner program for this over at HF and I'm happy to be the first on the list. I'm very much looking forward to listening to the first Pass Labs product dedicated to headphones. I've got the Dynalo mk2 and Crack 2 in house to compare with and I'll be bringing the amp with me to the January 30 HF meet in San Jose if anyone else in the Bay Area cares for a listen. Some pics from Tyll:

Hey all, Just heard from my friend Renato [looser101] and Peter has finally dropped my amp off to him, so I will be getting it back tonight. I'll be sure to take pics and let you know how it is and if there are any improvements. Apparently the faceplate still looks pretty ghetto, but I will be having a nice wood one made by Steve [swt61] anyways. Now on to the tube question: He has removed the 4 6H30's from the amp and installed 4 6BZ7's. I haven't talked to him about this, so I don't know the reason, but I am sure he will explain it to me tonight... though I doubt it will make any sense. Anyways, what do you know about hte 6BZ7? What brands would you recomme…

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:

I think it may be a weird question. But I am thinking about going for either a high end dynamic setup with RSA B52(with grado PS1) or a high end electrostatic setup with single power ES1 (with stax Omega). Having no experience about them. I wonder whether it is worth at investing on the single power ES1 or RSA B52. if you agree with ES1, how much do you think i should invest on it? My only taste is that super big soundstage and real sound thanks

I know you guys usually don't like this sort of post, but I can't make up my mind and to me this is the best place to get some help. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience! To make a long story short: I might have the opportunity to upgrade from my MKI GS-X to a beautiful red MKII for about 900 bucks. However, I have a buyer now for my MKI (which is extremely lucky as selling it should be a pain in Brazil) and the MKII guy is about 90% sure of his sale. If I make the buyer wait, he might give up and I'll have a hard time selling the GS-X later and will probably miss the opportunity to grab that MKII. If I sell it now though, there's a risk that the guy won't…

Folks, friend of mine is looking to upgrade his rig. He's toying with the idea of Cavalli amp. I tried to talk him out from it since it looks to me that this folks is way to greedy in charging his work lately. $6500 for an SS balanced amp with whatever mumbo jumbo parts inside is simply too much IMHO. So now he's torn between Eddie Current or Headamp or Cavalli. Everyone knows Justin work, but I'm just curious about the repo of EC and Cavalli in your eyes. Which one you'd prefer to have?

3 years ago I gave some equipment to a friend to store for me and I just picked it back up. 99% of everything looks great, but it appears my RKV was left out on a shelf (unplugged) and has accumulated quite a bit of dust. Before I fire it back up any suggestions on how to get it relatively clean? Would not look forward to scraping out a ton of dust with a Q-tip.

I have posted some over on head-fi about this amp so I thought I would start a thread here too. The Extreme is THE AMP under< $1000 from my experiences. This amp is so good for such a modest price I am still trying to comprehend how good. Every positive characteristic you can identify seems to be present in copious amounts .... soundstaging, tone, dynamics, bass slam, "midrange magic" etc... This amp particularly elevates the 580/600, and the power of this amp has my Alessandro M2Si rocking along, in addition to giving the M2Si a soundstage well beyond what I have heard from any Grado headphone previously .... even using senn yellow 19545 pads. For you guys wanting an …

Oh SNAP! Just when I thought my wallet was safe Tyll goes and drops a bombshell like this thing: For more information have a look at the Sponsored Thread on Head-Fi.

Copying KG and Birgir's posts from the Stax Huddler thread

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…

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…

Hello everyone, I'm thinking about buying an electrostatic amp and I'm leaning towards the KGSS because of my general dislike of tubes and the fact that when you change the tubes you can change the sound etc. I prefer to have such things under control (barring damage, SS is the same now as it is in a year). That said if the BHSE is only uses the tubes for the high voltage swing capabilities and is entirely transparent then maybe that's a better bet. On paper it has a lot more voltage swing etc. At least initially I will be using the Koss ESP950s but I figure I'll end up with O2s as well. They'll all have to go though my correction process and then I'll see if el…

Hello Everyone This is my first post here. I have done some research about T1 troubles here and didn't find any topic about hot trafo. In my opinion this trafo is too hot but I don't have another SRM-T1 to check. I have removed tubes and then trafo is only warm - seems ok. Picture shows where I put temp sensor (blue wire). Did anyone had similar problems? P.S. I have just bought SR-Omega with Mk1 driver and SRM-T1 - amazing sound My previous system was SRM-727 and SR-507 and it wasn't so good.

Specs Pure class-A, with 20W power draw at idle 16-600 Ohms load (optimised for low impedance) 1700mW into 40Ohm load W 184mm，L 300mm，H 56mm 2.2 KG Sorry for blurry pictures, it is taken from my phone. Better internal shot from the builder: (the transformer is shielded in a metal case as seen in my photo) Exterior The amp is cased in a thick chassis and finished with thick brushed silver front panel. The volume control is metal with texture on it to prevent slipping. Rear of the amp have standard IEC power socket and a pair of RCA inputs. The RCA sockets are gold plated and bolted to the chassis, not direct stressing the PCB. The overall finish is v…

Two new amps have just been announced: https://stax.co.jp/products/srm-700t/ https://stax.co.jp/products/srm-700s/

Hey folks, what are your thoughts on the new high end stuff like the B52, the PPX3 XLR and such like that? I've heard that the B52 will cost in the 5-6000 range, anyone hear anything directly from Ray or otherweise know anything about it? It's made the rounds at a few meets now (most recently the Boston Meet), but things seem really tight lipped about the thing. What is it exactly? A headphone amp that also has preamp functionality? A preamp that is also a good headamp? (yah yah a headamp is basically a specialized preamp, but you guys know what I mean)... Any ideas on the tube complement? The 5687s x 4 seem to have been identified, but what about the other 4? they se…

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…

I have read a lot of good things about the Es-1, aristaeus and of course the hev90. All 3 are obtainable and in the case of the hev90 if you know where to ask. But I wonder what are the differences between the three? I currently use a 007t to drive my electrostat headphone and am looking for something which improves on it. I am looking for something which tightens up the bass over the 007t and if possible goes lower. Also I find the 007t and phone has a kind of even tonal balance. I prefer things a little on the warmer side. Also I hear this metallic ringing or sheen to notes. This is distracting to say the least. So any amp which does not have any of these fl…

House Fire Where? Who? When? and we know the supposed why.

Hi everybody at Head-Case forum! It's a pleasure to finally join you as well. ) Lately I've been checking out the Woo Audio WA6 tube amplifier. Does anyone here have any experience with this product and care to share some impressions/experiences? How does it sound and compete with other amplifiers? Does it sound very tube-like, for example very colored and veiled? Is the tube-upgrades worth the money, both rectifier- and drivertubes? Does anyone have any experience in tube rolling? I really like the properties of transistoramps, and I currently have two, but I really want to try out a quality tubeamp. Which tubes would you recommend to achieve a sound si…

Well I just got done doing tests on the HD650 using my ECM8000 measurement mic and dummy head and room EQ Wizard (that some of you have seen). I kept the mic and headphones in the same spot and tried the following: HD 650 running Balanced from the GS-X (of DAC3 Balanced) HD 650 running SE from the GS-X (of DAC3 Balanced) HD 650 running SE from AE-2 plugged in with wall wart(off DAC3 SE) HD 650 running SE from AE-2 running off battery (off DAC3 SE) I attempted to volume match all 4 configurations but ended up having about .3 db (at 1kHz) variation that I could take out using the software so they all have the same value at 1kHz. Attached are the frequency response…