Your experience with speaker amps driving headphones...

Discussion in 'Headphone Amplifiers and Combo (DAC/Amp) Units' started by murphythecat, Apr 21, 2017.

  1. murphythecat

    murphythecat GRU-powered uniformed trumpkin

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    hi everyone

    after looking over the last few months to upgrade my headphone system, I realized how many veteran members eventually simply use a high quality speaker amp to drive their headphones.

    Id love to know the experience of users here.
     
  2. m17xr2b

    m17xr2b Friend

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    I'm using my Moon 600i for LCD-3/4 with great results. I slightly prefer it over the Stratus even with the best tubes but it depends on my mood. I also used the TBI Millenia with various headphones with great success. Nothing wrong with it from my point of view but I had to build a resistance network so the amp sees 8 ohm instead of the 200 of the LCD-4 with a 10-15db attenuation. With some high gain speaker amps you might hear the noise floor with the headphone connected directly.
    Try it yourself and see what you make of it. I tried it because I had the amps on hand otherwise I wound't have bough an expensive amp just for a curiosity.
     
  3. Oregonian

    Oregonian New

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    I use nothing but vintage speaker amps to drive my Pioneer SE Master 1 and Denon LA7000.............have very little experience with headphone-specific amps. Have no interest either in them - I love the ability to tweak the sound with my EQ and tone controls of the Spec 1 preamp/Spec 2 amp combo I have (look at pic in my avatar) which is quite simply amazing sound.
     
  4. themystical

    themystical New

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    I have just built myself a DIY amp using the Icepower Class D 50W Single Ended Stereo module and it sounds fantastic with both my AKG K1000's and Focal Elears. Previously I was using a Chinese 10W valve amp and earlier still a Musical Fidelity XCanV2. For high impedance headphones, I see no reason to differentiate between Headphone Amplifier and Speaker Amplifiers. IEM's and lower impedance headphones could be a bit of problem depending on the noise floor and gain of the amp but my Class D is silent even with my low impedance Elears.
     

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