So it's not recommended to drive headphones directly out of an amp's XLR outputs?

[brianknewbie]

I recently contacted a manufacturer about getting one of their balanced amps for use with PS-1s that I am looking to get recabled as balanced and possibly my XLR'd Zu 650s.

I was surprised at the response:
"It's generally not recommended to use the balanced outputs direct from
a source to drive headphones. While most of them will provide enough
voltage, there is very little current output and the output impedance
is very high which rolls off the frequency response of the headphone. It
may be acceptable with high impedance phones but definitely not with
low impedance as sources aren't designed for that purpose."

I'm still very new to all this but I've heard nothing but good things about using the DAC1, Blockhead, Gilmore Reference etc to drive the 650s, PS-1s, etc.

Am I misunderstanding something here? Would really appreciate some clarification as apparently I have a lot to learn!

Thanks in advance,
Brian

[brianknewbie]

I misunderstood -- the recommendation above was that DAC1 and other sources may not be suited to power all headphones via XLR though this seems to be OK with Senn 650.....but amp's XLR outputs are recommended instead of the source directly.

[Hello]

Ok, I am far from an expert on the subject, but I will give this a try...

Like the email suggested, the lower the impedance of the phones the more current that is required to drive them optimally. (Likewise, the higher the impedance, the less current that is required). The Senn-HD-650 a fairly high impedance phones, so they require (comparitively) little current to drive them well.

I think, in general, an amp would be recommended to drive the headphones properly -- even, in the case, of the Dac-1 and the HD-650. It's just that there is a bit of luck that the XLR output matches well the HD-650. Still, if you put a Blockhead or Dynahi, you would get even better sound, but at a much higher cost.

If you get your Senn's recabled to XLR, I'd love to hear your thoughts on Dac-1 -> XLR Senn-HD650 vs. Dac-1 -> GS-1 -> HD-650.