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So, are intergratted amps the 'new' flavor of the month? - Page 2

post #16 of 35
8/28/08 at 8:51pm
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There are a couple other benefits, too. One, people will get FM coverage.
Well, that's if it has a built in tuner of course.
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post #17 of 35
8/28/08 at 9:14pm
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Originally Posted by nikongod View Post
I think you mean overestimating.
No. I meant what I wrote. Today's generation of kids has access to an incredible amount of disposable income. One just has to look at teens and their computers and games to know it's not a stretch to get them into some solid headphones and amps...now!


Quote:
Originally Posted by nikongod View Post
The stuff that will have the truly exceptional headphone outputs most likely has everything else built to a similar standard. Buying this gear is either a once in a lifetime deal or in the budget range that puts you back to buying a nice headphone amplifier which will likely provide better documented performance.

If you know what to look out for the deals in "one box stereos" can be very good, but its a hobby all of its own really.
Excellent points.
One seems to either stumble into the really good old receivers for peanuts at flea markets and garage sales or they show up at ebay dealers for more than the cost of a good headamp.

I have an Old Aurex Toshiba SA-3500 that looks pretty and sounds good enough to have been in my bedside or office rig over the years but it's now gathering dust in a closet.

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Originally Posted by scompton View Post
And wives
Well yeah although mine is an insane workaholic who makes a small fortune.
How else do you think I get away with undiagnosed headphone purchasitus and maintain decent W.A.F.?

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post #18 of 35
8/28/08 at 10:07pm
The Woo Audio 5 is an integrated amp that is known to be a high quality headphone amplifier that can drive speakers. This is a good pick for an integrated- as long as you are you using efficient watt speakers.

IMO, a great way to go is getting a high quality headphone amp with preamp outputs. THis way you be guaranteed to get great headphone performance and have the flexibility to hear music through speakers as well. I experimented with the Little Dot 2+ with preamp out puts connected to a vintage Marantz reciever and it sounded fabulous! The speakers sounded much better with the Little Dot 2+ as a preamp compared to the Marantz only.

If you are on a budget, a vintage reciever is excellent but I prefer the headphone jack of a tube amp despite the excellence of the solid state reciever headphone out.
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post #19 of 35
8/28/08 at 11:21pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Spareribs View Post
The Woo Audio 5 is an integrated amp that is known to be a high quality headphone amplifier that can drive speakers. This is a good pick for an integrated- as long as you are you using efficient watt speakers.

IMO, a great way to go is getting a high quality headphone amp with preamp outputs. THis way you be guaranteed to get great headphone performance and have the flexibility to hear music through speakers as well. I experimented with the Little Dot 2+ with preamp out puts connected to a vintage Marantz reciever and it sounded fabulous! The speakers sounded much better with the Little Dot 2+ as a preamp compared to the Marantz only.

If you are on a budget, a vintage reciever is excellent but I prefer the headphone jack of a tube amp despite the excellence of the solid state reciever headphone out.
My receiver has a optical out.. So could I use a external DAC to bypass the mediocre Brown Burr dac??
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post #20 of 35
8/29/08 at 12:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by IceClass View Post
One seems to either stumble into the really good old receivers for peanuts at flea markets and garage sales or they show up at ebay dealers for more than the cost of a good headamp.
I wonder why in so many posts it seems to be a choice between vintage receivers from the 70s/80s (often subject to inflated prices) or the latest HT receivers. What happened to the 90s and 2000s? The 90s produced some of the best models from the best makers (Rotel, Marantz, NAD etc), and those makers are still making good stereo integrateds/receivers. I would suggest those considering an integrated look at stuff on Ebay around 15 years old or less, or if they don't want used stuff, try models like the Marantz PM4001 or NAD C325 and up. There's no mystery and no great difficulty in all this. Any reasonable dealer will let you use your phones to try out different current models. As for Ebay, bid well, pay sensible prices and if you don't like what you buy you can resell without loss--sometimes with gain. Plus it's great fun.
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post #21 of 35
8/29/08 at 1:18am
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Originally Posted by pp312 View Post
I wonder why in so many posts it seems to be a choice between vintage receivers from the 70s/80s (often subject to inflated prices) or the latest HT receivers. What happened to the 90s and 2000s? The 90s produced some of the best models from the best makers (Rotel, Marantz, NAD etc), and those makers are still making good stereo integrateds/receivers. I would suggest those considering an integrated look at stuff on Ebay around 15 years old or less, or if they don't want used stuff, try models like the Marantz PM4001 or NAD C325 and up. There's no mystery and no great difficulty in all this. Any reasonable dealer will let you use your phones to try out different current models. As for Ebay, bid well, pay sensible prices and if you don't like what you buy you can resell without loss--sometimes with gain. Plus it's great fun.
I think people keep referring back to the vintage stuff out of habit. This the third (or is it the fourth?) thread on this subject and I think many may have missed the first one, the one that established that the headphone outs of modern receivers are, contrary to the Head Fi conventional wisdom, implemented the same way they were in the 70s - resistors on the main speaker amps. Well done and driving high impedance cans, there's every reason to expect the headphone sections of these amps to perform as well as they do with speakers.

Then there is also the fact that in many cases, they actually don't make them like they used to. There are exceptions, of course. Modern integrateds from NAD, Rotel, Marantz, Cambridge Audio, Onkyo and perhaps Yamaha are up to pretty high build standards, but in the 70s, those high standards also included HK, Sony, Kenwood, Sansui and quite a few more. It was just a different era. My father's entry-level Kenwood receiver from the 70s is pretty close to the level of my top-of-the-line HK integrated from the same era. And the headphone jack sounds good.

Tim
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post #22 of 35
8/29/08 at 4:01am
What you say may be true, Tim, but buying amps/receivers from the 70s or even 80s is impractical and likely to be fraught with disappointment. Over the course of 30 years things go out of alignment. Things drift. Things leak. Transformers go open circuit. I recommend stuff from the last 15 years precisely because it isn't likely to need a major overhaul and isn't subject to a lot of "antique" price hiking, yet, when you stick to the brands mentioned, still offers more than a hint of the "Golden Age". Even now, when most manufacturers are into stuffing HT boxes with poor IC amps to get 150w x 7 plus every bell and whistle you can think of, Rotel, NAD and Marantz are still quietly making quality stereo stuff that will drive most HPs, particularly high impedance, well enough to suit 95% of users. Even Pioneer still makes stereo amps, though I haven't heard enough about them yet to comment.
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post #23 of 35
8/29/08 at 5:42am
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Originally Posted by zotjen View Post
Quote:
There are a couple other benefits, too. One, people will get FM coverage.
Well, that's if it has a built in tuner of course.
Sure! My integrated don't have an FM tuner, or a RIAA for that matter.
"Just" a preamplifier and amplifier built into one (1) unit
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post #24 of 35
8/29/08 at 9:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by pp312 View Post
What you say may be true, Tim, but buying amps/receivers from the 70s or even 80s is impractical and likely to be fraught with disappointment. Over the course of 30 years things go out of alignment. Things drift. Things leak. Transformers go open circuit. I recommend stuff from the last 15 years precisely because it isn't likely to need a major overhaul and isn't subject to a lot of "antique" price hiking, yet, when you stick to the brands mentioned, still offers more than a hint of the "Golden Age". Even now, when most manufacturers are into stuffing HT boxes with poor IC amps to get 150w x 7 plus every bell and whistle you can think of, Rotel, NAD and Marantz are still quietly making quality stereo stuff that will drive most HPs, particularly high impedance, well enough to suit 95% of users. Even Pioneer still makes stereo amps, though I haven't heard enough about them yet to comment.
I think that's a strong recommendation, and the stuff from the 80s and 90s is easier to find. But I think you underestimate the strength of the old stuff from the 70s. Audioasylum and AudioKarma are full of vintage freaks. The DIY guys get carried away, go in and change out all the caps, etc. But most of the old stuff just needs a good cleaning and a couple of caps at the most. I brought my Harman Kardon back up to specs a few months ago for a $55 service charge -- cleaning, one leaky capacitor.

ON EDIT: By the way, I don't check receivers because I have a couple of tuners I'm happy with, but the integrated amplifiers section of ebay is just fat with the stuff we're talking about right now -- plenty of 70s Japanese, lots of NADs, a few Rotels, even one of the rare Teacs. If I just wanted to look at it, I'd have to have this one:



Be still my beating heart.

Tim
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post #25 of 35
8/29/08 at 11:21am
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Originally Posted by Sob View Post
There is no reason to maintain two opposed cathegories "headphone amps" and "speaker amps" because there is no difference of principle (unless you consider a series resistor on the output to be that ).
Yes. Quick Googling gets this:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/852300-post22.html
Much better than, "it doesn't sound right," which is close to as far as I could go on my experience.
Note while a + and - resistor are mentioned, one on either leg still forms a voltage divider who's attenuation ends up varying by frequency.

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The real issue here, as I see it, is that big-brand (with a big tradition) integrateds, even cheap it doesn't matter, tend to take advantage of the more solid skills and resources of their designer teams.
I imagine that's far closer to the truth than anything else. It doesn't require genius, but does require that the designers pay attention to each feature.
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post #26 of 35
8/29/08 at 11:42am
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Originally Posted by cerbie View Post
Yes. Quick Googling gets this:
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/852300-post22.html
Much better than, "it doesn't sound right," which is close to as far as I could go on my experience.
Note while a + and - resistor are mentioned, one on either leg still forms a voltage divider who's attenuation ends up varying by frequency.

I imagine that's far closer to the truth than anything else. It doesn't require genius, but does require that the designers pay attention to each feature.
This effect of using resistors has been well-covered in the threads about receivers and integrateds, and theoretically, the post you linked is correct. The question, of course, is "can you hear it?" The answer seems to be "not usually." High impedance phones seem to be a safer bet, but people have even reported good results with Denons plugged into receivers. As always, your ears are the best testing equipment.

Tim
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post #27 of 35
8/29/08 at 12:23pm
I claim no experience with high impedance cans at all. I have yet to hear any. Chances are it will be that way for some time. I can only claim to have listened through such a resistored jack with what's in my sig, K240S (through a store's unit), and HD555 (the highest impedance HP I've heard, at 120Ohm nominal).
Quote:
Originally Posted by tfarney View Post
The question, of course, is "can you hear it?"
Whether it makes a significant audible difference should vary, but only on the HP output, which is why it is a change in principle of operation. There are at least four clear variables for it to depend on (user's brain, resistor values, HP average impedance, and HP impedance difference between frequencies commonly heard at the same time).
Quote:
The answer seems to be "not usually."
Care in design and implementation trumps every other possible factor 99% of the time, for anything anyone has ever designed and built. Resistors on the output are not a strong design, compared to others. "Not usually," can can be translated into, "it can be," an affirmation that a series resistor does change the principle of operation in a way that can make a difference. That doesn't mean your integrated speaker amp's HP out with a series resistor is crap. It means it will need attention in the design phase, as its own feature, and that its quality will not be represented by other aspects of quality the unit may possess.
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post #28 of 35
8/29/08 at 12:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by cerbie View Post
I claim no experience with high impedance cans at all. I have yet to hear any. Chances are it will be that way for some time. I can only claim to have listened through such a resistored jack with what's in my sig, K240S (through a store's unit), and HD555 (the highest impedance HP I've heard, at 120Ohm nominal). Going to my portable amp offered clear differences, and very similar differences across them. That and Ohm's Law -> claim of major difference in principle of operation.

Whether it makes a significant audible difference could vary. Care in design and implementation trumps every other possible factor 99% of the time, for anything anyone has ever designed and built, and ever will design and build.
I'm not even sure what "care in design and implementation would mean when putting resistors in the path between a speaker amp and a headphone jack. The right values in the resistors? I can't imagine that any respectable manufacturer would not take at least that much care. I do know this much:

A) The characteristic sound that my old Harman Kardon integrated has had with a variety of speakers is also what it has with my Senn HD580s -- a very strong, but reasonably well-controlled bass, and an almost tube-like smoothness in the upper mids and trebles. I also know that I had the opportunity to compare it to a Glow Audio Amp One recently, and while that amp does have speaker terminals, the headphone section is implemented as it would be in a dedicated headphone amp -- tapped straight off of the output transformer. The differences between the Glow and the old HK, through the Senns, are extremely subtle (in favor of the Glow by a nose). When I plug into my Panasonic digital receiver, thats headphone section is op amp-based, the differences are more pronounced, but still not huge, and are pretty much what I'd expect, knowing the sound of the HK. In other words, the resistors in the HK are changing the sound of my Senns very little, if at all.

Tim
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post #29 of 35
8/29/08 at 1:31pm
If I remember correctly, isn't tfarney's HK amp some super funky thing with colored lights and much 70s groove value??
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post #30 of 35
8/29/08 at 1:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by IceClass View Post
If I remember correctly, isn't tfarney's HK amp some super funky thing with colored lights and much 70s groove value??
More buttons than a cheap accordian. More lights than a hair metal concert. Sounds great:



Tim
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