Since a few days I am the lucky owner of the Sennheiser HD 600. My choice has for a great part been based upon the stuff I read in this forum. I know I am now going to ask a question that has been asked in a zillion ways already. But there is just no meassage threat I can find with a clear answer. So I would appreciate it you can give me your thoughts.

Basically I have an ONKYO stereo receiver and CD-player (and Infinity boxes, but that is not relevant here ). In my opinion both sound great. Nevertheless, no to bother my girlfriend all the time, I decided to also go for good head phones. And here I am.

First of all, I was wondering what is - for a start - better: the phone input of the reciever or the cd-player (can the 300 ohm damages any of the components?). It seems I like the cd-player more, which suprises me because I thought it ought to be the job of the amplifier... Nevertheless, it seems that the liitle headphone input / amplifier on the cd player can do the job (it also has volume adjustment). I only have to "open" it for about 25%.

Another thing is a separate amp. Everybody in this forum seem to agree that this is at least even better than the already good sounding standard inputs on a cdplayer/receiver.... right? OK, if so, what would be a good suggestion for an amp without spending a crazy amount of money. For example; how is the HeadRoom Little? Please give me some suggestion what would be a good amp (price/quality) for the HD 600.

Thanks!

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No.

The only way to tell which is the better jack between the receiver and the CD player is to plug them in and find out like you already have. The jacks vary widely in quality between different models of even the same manufacturers equipment.

Likewise with the amplifier, it's really hard to say how much improvement you will see since it depends on the quality of your source as well as the quality of the headphoone jacks. If you have a bad source and the world's best amp, you will probably see relatively little improvement. OTOH, if you have a great source with a bad jack, you will probably hear great improvement using a good amp.

There are a lot of amps out there and if you want people to really suggest a good one some details you might want to furnish would be:

1) Price Range - What might not seem crazy to me might to you.

2) What type of music do you listen to?

3) What characteristics do you want in an amplifier? Great midrange, maybe a tube amp. Great bass, probably a solid state.

4) Does the amplifier need to be portable?

If you don't mention this type of information, the responses you get will be what that individual likes not necessarily what you are looking for!

To give you an idea of what is out there try doing a search on the HD600 in the headphones and amplifiers sections. There have been a tom of discussions dealing with how particular amplifiers mate with the HD600. Good Luck!

Thanks so far! I will do some more investigation in this board. However, for those who have some suggestions in this thread, I will reply to the five questions of gpalmer:

1) around USD/EUR 350
2)Classic/Vocal
3) natural; no booming bass
4)no


Hope this helps

It sounds like you're a good candidate for a tube amp. Unfortunately I don't know the product offerings in your price range. I'm sure someone will be along to help you spend your money soon enough though. We're like that here. Oh and BTW, Welcome to Head-Fi hang on to your wallet!

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Try the Headsave Elite Classic, or Primare PPA:

http://www.headsave.com

Or a Home PIMETA or PPA from JMT:

http://www.jmtaudio.com

Both neutral amps with a flat frequency response and low impedance at the headphone jack (thus I'd say natural as well). Never mind comments about "great bass" being associated with solid state or whatever... a good amp will be neutral and pass the music along (but amplified of course), just as your source presents it, whether it uses tubes or transistors.

An amp that emphasizes bass or treble is really a tone control that amplifies, and hopefully what you really want to do is just make your source louder like a good amp is designed to do, with as few added colorations and distortions as possible. Not very exciting, but that's what a hi-fi amplifier is supposed to do.

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The part about a good amplifier being neutral is the ideal that most in the field strive for, but there is no amplifer that is truly neutral, nor does everyone agree that is the goal, some designers intentionally introduce colorations because they feel it sounds better. The fact is that tube and solid state amplifiers both have their own performance characteristics that can be generalized, not that all amplifiers based on one or the other technology ALWAYS adhere to these characteristics. There are tube amps with great bass and solid state amps with great midrange, it's just less often.

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It may sound better, but it ain't high fidelity (in my view anyway).
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I really don't agree -- I think all amps have to be judged on individual merits. There are some characteristics like differences in output power with tubes vs. transistors, but I don't agree about the bass and treble characterizations you made. Amps are not supposed to be tone controls, in my opinion.

Sharkie...

...with the two amps I own -- Corda HA-2 and Earmax Pro -- the HD 600 sounds exceptionally good IMO, especially with your preferred music. One is a solid-state, the other a tube amp. I think they represent their design principles characteristically: clarity, detail and dynamics with the HA-2, smoothness, liquidity and colorfulness with the EMP. But the HA-2 has also a lot of (midrange) smoothness to offer, in turn the EMP has a very detailed and extended treble...


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True. But unfortunately there's no neutral amp. And even if the balance between bass, midrange and treble is fairly even, there will be other, not necessarily less striking colorations.

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Funny that I don't seem to hear these striking, dramatic colorations a lot of people seem to, provided that the amp is good quality. Mostly it's an amplified version of the source sound, with some relatively minor and subtle colorations. A lot of people make a big deal out of the differences between amps, whereas beyond a certain level of quality and proper design I hear very few difference (provided differences aren't 'designed in' on purpose -- those amps I tend to stay away from, since by definition they're low-fidelity... meaning they don't retain fidelity to the original source).

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This may have to do with the fact that you haven't owned much (high-quality) amps yourself, with the possibility to audition them unhurriedly and extensively at home, in your familiar system. The differences I hear are very distinctive.

I am with Jazz on this discussion of amps sounding different. I have solid state gilmore amps right now and when I got to hear a friends singlepower SDS they do not sound alike. There is a liquidity and richness that my solid state amp just didnt have. But to me, my gilmore has a more neutral and faster sound to it. But the SDS has this realness to it thats hard to describe; that I have only heard from tubes. When I had a tube preamp, again, the tube preamp had a tonal richness and fullness to it I havent heard in any solid state preamps I have listened through to this point. I certainly havent heard most amps/ preamps but I have heard many.

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It's a coloration (even-order harmonics), but if it makes the music sound better then more power to you. You weren't hearing the original recording as it actually sounds however, but with a pleasant coloration making the music sound richer and fuller. Here's a reasonable explanation that doesn't really take sides:

http://www.paia.com/tubesnd.htm

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You're completely wrong if you think solid-state amps guarantee the original sound. They alter the sound to a similar degree, just in a different way.

Even order harmonics as a reason tubes sound different is speculation. No one has ever determined why tube amps sound different / better or whatever. Some tubes have a wider range of linear operation, need less negative feedback than typical solid state devices and obviously different tubes sound different themselves. The original topic was you dont hear drastic differences in amps and that was what I commented on. I do. I never mentioned hearing colorations both have them. And since both are not perfect your not hearing how the original recording sounds either. One last point if we are going to speculate, many in the recording fields believe tubes add harmonics back in that are lost during the recording process; thus making the sound more lifelike and closer to the original not less so.