DT770 with 2009 Zero amp/dac (Maybe Others)

I am in the same boat I think - I started by wanting to replace the cans but now I think I will wait until I finish up my Millett Starving Student Amp, I will let you know how it sounds when I finish it ( hopefully by the end of the week )

Beyers and AKGs may disappoint compared to an HD650, many people just don't want to shell out $350. They see the Sennheisers then for half price the K701s and DT770s, they say hey all 3 are high end, I'll just pick the cheaper of the three because they're all in the same class. I've got all 3 and Beyer/AKG just fatigue the hell out of me with their lack of warmth and bass and grating treble, even with many different recables and gear choices. Don't get me wrong, AKG and Beyer have their fans, but the reality lies in which ones have spent the most time on my head. When DIYing and demoing new gear I can simply tell the difference between brands of wire and whatnot with HD650, they are a reference to me whereas the others are just headphones. I can tell you now that if your gear is not worth over $2000 then a well recabled HD650 sounds nearly as nice as a stock cabled HD800 running single ended; HD800 has vastly more potential but a good cable can level the playing field. Something with high end wire like Cryoparts' own TWCu copper wire such as the Twisted Cables made by Qusp on Headfi let the HD650 sound way better than they should for the price.

Sorry to threadjack, I may try the D2+ sometime as it has the right options and the same DAC chip as the more expensive Pico which is a good sign. I'd say their reputation for quality beats Zeroes although perhaps 2009 is a better year for them. They're totally different products, a wall powered amp is going to be a little more powerful on average.

Oh, and the USB is a good thing. The optical out of the Macbook/pro has a reputation around here for being no bueno. A well shielded USB cable will probably win as it is a little less prone to jitter, although getting a nice optical like the Van Den Hul Optocoupler can help. The Zero certainly has more options for connectivity. With all the bad stuff that Zeroes have done over the past few years when their quality control dropped, i'd be loath to trust them, I've heard nary a bad thing about iBasso quality and if you want portability it's the way to go.

Yep, there's no reason to lament the lack of optical. Especially if it's a portable laptop rig. If you were wanting to use it with a CD player or xbox then maybe, but I doubt that. It can headphone amp a line input too so that would work for that too. And I love how the new ones work with a line out as a standalone DAC. It's such a better deal than the Pico but i'll probably get a Pico when I have $500 that I never want to see again.

Hey sovelin, finally got the starving student done and working.

Initial reports show that the amp works very well, it didn't really do much for the bass response but it does have enough power to drive the 770s past their limit without distortion. Anyway I like the way that it sounds but I think that you were looking for something more portable. I will do some more listening this week and maybe have a more thorough report if you are interested.

I've owned the DT770/D2 Boa combo before, and it's a decent match. The Beyers did sound good on it, maybe a little bit underpowered, but a nice dedicated desktop amp would probably be much nicer for them. Never really did get a good chance to get a good amp for them, so take my word FWIW.

Well I can tell you that the iPod and Fiio e3 will leave much to be desired, I have that combo and it does a decent job at low levels but if you turn the volume up or turn the eq on all bets are off. My experience was a lot of distortion and clipping.

As for the starving student amp - this thing is so cool! You can definitely tell that the sound is warmer, I am really impressed by it. That being said, it was not the gain that I expected the amp will drive the beyers to their max capacity but I would still like more out of them one mod that I did was to put a layer of Dynamat inside the cups hoping to scavenge some of the escaping sound, well that didn't work but it did make them even more isolated. I am willing to bet that you could use these things as shooting muffs.

Hope that gives you a little more insight.