starving student hybrid with k701

You post a very vague question. You can throw in any headphone with an amp and that won't mean it will match it. If you would be more specific and tell us your musical interests, we would be able to give you more appropriate response.

I own the K701 and use it with my Millett "Starving Student", it's a great match as the little amp has a sweet tone and power to spare for the hungry K701.

I'm not sure about "indie" but the combo is great for acoustic music, including jazz (Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, etc).

The only precaution you need to follow is to never power the amp on or off with the phones plugged in, as it produces a rather loud thump; always turn the amp on, then plug in your 'cans. Reverse the process for power off.

cheers!

+1 on the plug/unplug issue. A friend has one of those amps with a Senn HD600 and that THUMP is pretty huge (we accidentally turned it on with the 'phones plugged in).

Sorry for the slight thread jack, but would this issue apply to the Minimax to?

This is generally the case for all diy type amps that don't have a protective circuit built in. In general its good practice to not have your headphones plugged in during power up and down, regardless of the amp.

I thought maybe the relay delay circuit was the protective circuit. I remember reading somewhere where it said that it is better to have the headphone plugged in while turning it on and off. Maybe that was for solid state amps?

This is actually contrary to what I've heard from the same question I asked in the Amp forum a while back. Over there, the general consensus was that it's better for the amp to actually power it on with your headphones plugged in (apparently, more so for tube amps, less so for SS... not sure where hybrids fall in). Of course, you'd always want to have your volume down to minimum when doing this (so that you don't damage the headphones) so it's definitely a good practice to turn your volume all the way down. I recall Jack Woo at Woo Audio saying that he recommends that I turn my WA6 with volume down but my headphones plugged in.

Unless you guys are just talking strictly about DIY amps... I've never tried a Millet or any other DIY amps.

It might of been your thread I read, so I at least always have my volume all the way down. Hopefully someone can answer this question on here.

Hmm, interesting. I was just going off other types of audio equipment, you never want a signal to be able to pass to your speakers while your power amps are powering up or down. Guess for some reason this may be different with some types of headphone amps.

Though I can't imagine a reason why it would be bad for your headphones to not be plugged in while the amp is powering up. But I'm sure woo knows what he speaks of.

Actually, he's speaking from the amp point of view, so he's saying that it may not be good for the amp to power on without the headphone plugged in. Probably something to do with the amp circuitry not being complete without the phones being plugged. Of course, you'd probably put your headphones at risk if you plug it and power the amp on with the volume already on high (hence why you should always turn the volume all the way down after use... good habit to get into for many reasons).

So you disconnect your speakers before turning your amp on/off?

No. The MiniMAX has a relay-delay circuit that fully protects your headphones upon power-up/down.

There is a lot of misinformation out there about whether to leave your headphones plugged in or unplugged upon power-up. The only instance where you would want to leave your headphones plugged in is if you have an output-transformer-coupled amp with a fairly high power reserve. It's not good to turn on one of those type of amps without a connected load. However, I think you'll find that this type of situation is much more rare than you'd think. I think Woo Audio recommends that you leave a headphone plugged in, but they may be an exception.

With hybrids and OTL tube amps, you'd want to leave the headphones unplugged in every case, unless a relay-delay is in effect. This is because almost every one of those type of amps have output coupling caps. The reason for this is that the tube circuit will transmit pure DC (usually at the bias point value, which can be quite high) to the headphone output until the coupling caps charge up. Anyone who's used an electronic-flash-equipped camera can attest to the fact that this charge-up is not instantaneous. Until then, your headphones will be exposed to pure DC. This can be very damaging unless there's a relay-delay there to block the outputs until the caps charge up.

SS amps don't usually have this issue. With a prudent practice of having the volume turned down on turn-on/turn-off, you'll rarely experience any issue by having the headphones plugged in.

Again, these are only generalized recommendations. It may not be a simple matter to even discover how your amp is designed. You should find out the specific recommendations for your amp from the manufacturer.