Choosing an amp for the AKG K702 - Page 3

I bought mine from a Head-Fi member. Mine has the permanently attached power cord and I've been very happy with it.

The DV 3322 looks really nice. I have some questions about DV and other amps. How long is the expected life for a amp in this price range about 400 USD? And how big different is it between the standard tubes and high-end tubes?

Some of the solid-state amps, including the CanAmp, are Class-A amplifiers, meaning they run full tilt all the time and create a lot of heat. But it doesn't appear that the heat is damaging. On the contrary, they sound better after they've had a while to warm up. A lot of listeners and even Dan the dealer leave their CanAmps on all the time so they sound good right away.

I don't see these products as not turning on one day after two years of moderate use. If you take good care of a solid-state amp, I think it would last a very long time.

As for tubes, I know tubes burn out over time, and it is a gradual decline of quality before the sound drops off a cliff and they are just dreadful sounding. I've never owned a tube product other than a little Vox guitar amp I hardly use. :-) I don't know the difference between standard and high-end tubes. Someone else?

I spoke to Dan today. A REALLYYY nice guy. Seems like the type of person who goes out of their way for others. Unfortunately, he didn't have any CanAmps in stock He said that they should be getting more in in around 10 days. He referred me to a dealer in Austin TX that is somewhat close to me. Whetstone Audio. They seem like a great bunch as well. I wasnt able to get a hold of anyone there today, but will hopefully have my call replied or call them again soon.

If not, I'll check in with Dan to see if he's back in stock later.

Seems that these CanAmps sell themselves. I really wanted to go with some tubey amps, but from what I've read, the CanAmp delivers warmly and takes advantage of the 701's playback qualities.

Well, I'll wait it out some more until I can get a hold of one

Yep, Dan is nice, and he does go out of his way for us.

It used to be you'd have to wait for months and months for a CanAmp, but Heed Audio got a lot better with manufacturing them efficiently. However the current delay is due to the change between the attached cable and the IEC plug. They'll be in shortly. :-)

i feel that the audio-gd c2c does very well with k701/702's, and is also very good with grados and sennheisers.

A last questions before I do my order. Do any one know if there are any resellers in Europe for Darkvoice ?

eBay Seller: luckyfrogaudio: Consumer Electronics items on eBay.co.uk

Tho they only sell 336's. Haven't heard others than that in EU region.

are the darkvoices OTL amps?
personally i wouldn't recommend them for the k701/2 if it was.

I'd love to hear your impressions also. I'm still deciding whether I should order my amp as soon as Dan gets them in stock, or if I should wait until after Christmas (might be easier on mah pocket book).

I'm not a big fan of the AKG k240, to be honest. My school's studio has maybe 15 pairs of them, and a lot are falling apart, often around the ear cups and the plugs get to the point they have wires showing. They don't sound very rich to my ears, but then again, they're fed through group headphone amps with quality out the window. Also, I'm not sure whether they are classified as sealed or "semi-open", but they don't block nearly as much sound as they should for recording purposes. A lot of the musicians complain about how they feel, and the singer I was recording tonight said it was squeezing the her face by her ears and making it hard for her to sing. I think for junk studio headphones, there are better choices. I hadn't really considered them for detailed listening.

Oh, speaking of the studio, I have brought my headphones to sessions with three different clients, as they seem to provide a more accurate picture than the studio monitors do (the 3k pair have too much warm mid range and the 11k pair are way too hyped). And out of the three clients, two of them would walk in after a take to audition and immediately put on my headphones because they considered them to be the best listening source. It makes me proud of them.

Thanks for the update. I'm glad you did hear at least a slight difference, but do you regret purchasing it?

I think buying a DAC will help for multiple reasons:

First, of course, the digital to analog conversion is being performed by a higher quality chip.

Second, you aren't running the audio through the cheap headphone amplifier in your (on-board?) soundcard before reaching the headphone amp.

Third, with Windows machines, sounds are typically 44.1kHz, but they are up-sampled to 48kHz for the volume control and down-sampled again for the output. And the Windows SRC (sample rate converter) isn't the best sounding. If you are using a Mac, it may or may not be doing the same thing. When you get a DAC, make sure your media player has ASIO drivers to bypass the Windows volume control (and SRC).

Also, since you are a computer listener, make sure you are using lossless or uncompressed audio files. I don't think upgrading your headphone amp (or DAC) will do as much if it isn't the weakest link.

Actually Skye, the ASIO media player plugin doesn't bypass the volume control of windows. Unfortunately, I don't know where an attenuation setting of 0db is on a computer's volume control. Also Commanderloochy, do you have any of the sound card's effects turned on? Turn any EAX, Crystalizer, CMSS or 3D effects for your sound card off.

A DAC will definitely feed the amp with a clean signal, receiving a digital signal from your computer over either USB or SPDIF (digital coaxial or digital optical). But I would check if your computer has any sound effects settings turned on.

Clearly Wikipedia is the ultimate source of knowledge and incapable of erring.

My soundcard has a software mixer that runs separate from Windows Volume Control. Everything that comes through Windows Volume Control shows up in the stereo channel Wave 1/2, whereas my music routed from Foobar through an ASIO driver goes to ASIO Out 1/2 and ASIO Out 31/32. (Foobar insisted on four outputs instead of two for a stereo-interleaved audio file, I can't imagine why. I just mute 31/32 since they seem to be duplicates of 1/2.) With separate channels and individual channel metering on the software client directly linked to my soundcard, it makes it pretty clear what passes through Windows Volume Control and what doesn't.