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A Confession: five months, no amp

post #1 of 11
5/4/07 at 9:24pm
Thread Starter 
Like the title says--currently, I'm listening to Absent Lovers by King Crimson on my great DT990--connected straight to a DAC, with a volume control to cut out the hiss. Underpowered, I know, but it's still got great soundstage, balance, etc., and it sounds a lot better than my old HD555. I should have gotten it around Christmas, but breakage and money issues got in the way...and now I finally am in reach of getting one. It's not like those last five months were easy on the Beyer, either; I could have gotten one much faster, but most of my free money slipped into new CDs.

What I'm really asking is: how much of an improvement am I looking at with a decent, ~$150-250 amp? I'm considering a Portaphile V2^2 Maxxed, used Headfive, or Xenos 1HA-EPC, but I'm always open for others. Thanks for the help.
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post #2 of 11
5/4/07 at 9:25pm
As much as I'd like to recommend the Portaphile, I'll always suggest a Meier amp for Beyer phones.
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post #3 of 11
5/4/07 at 9:29pm
Will the Headfive work well with the 600 ohm DT-990s?
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post #4 of 11
5/4/07 at 9:30pm
Yeah, what about something like the Arietta? It might be slightly out of your price range, but worth it in my opinion.
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post #5 of 11
5/4/07 at 9:32pm
Were you talking to me or stew?

The impression I got was that the Arietta has negligible improvement over the Headfive for more money.
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post #6 of 11
5/4/07 at 9:34pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by M0T0XGUY View Post
Yeah, what about something like the Arietta? It might be slightly out of your price range, but worth it in my opinion.
I thought that the Arietta was just a rebranded, slightly upgraded version of the Headfive. Does it offer that much over the Headfive?

Nevermind, just echoed GSurge.
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post #7 of 11
5/4/07 at 9:59pm
Well, yeah,

Go used H5 @ 'bout $210 shipped should get you in! Those pieces are built for the long haul~
That's what I sold mine for recently...

Or also, keep a lookout for a Pimenta on the F/S subforums~

Good luck~
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post #8 of 11
5/4/07 at 11:15pm
Another amp to consider would be a Musical Fidelity X-Can V2. They go from $140 to $190 and IMO they sound very good.
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post #9 of 11
5/5/07 at 3:07am
One thing to consider is that you may be protecting your DAC by using a separate amp. Assuming you're using line-level outs on your DAC, and not a headphone amp, the DAC was designed to drive a very high impedance input--in the range of 10k to 100k ohms. Lower the impedance, raise the current. Some line-level output stages would see enough current to generate a damaging amount of heat when driving a low impedance circuit.

Of course, your volume control might be high impedance, and, if so, no worries on this front.
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post #10 of 11
5/5/07 at 3:13am
Man, you gotta get an amp.

I truly believe that a cheap pair of headphones with an awesome amp can be just as good or better than a great headphones that are poorly amped.
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post #11 of 11
5/5/07 at 11:59am
Quote:
Originally Posted by GSurge View Post
Were you talking to me or stew?

The impression I got was that the Arietta has negligible improvement over the Headfive for more money.
I've yet to hear a Headfive, but I must say that the Arietta does hold its own with Beyerdynamic phones. I was aware of the general consensus that the Headfive sounds better than the Arietta, but I like to recommend amps that are currently in production before I suggest ones that are accessible only by the second hand markets.
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