Can an a/v receiver power the K702?

Bill, this question (forget the headphone - your basic question is whether or not the headphone out on your AV receiver is any good) has come up many, many times during my short time at Head-Fi, and there was a suggestion that we compile a list of receivers/integrated amps which *did* have a decent headphone out. To the best of my knowledge, this hasnt happened.

 

Short answer is that it will probably have enough power, but not enough finesse/grip/'air' to bring out the best in your headphones. If you have a line-out on the receiver (its vintage, no ?), that is where you would connect the headphone amp, but it goes beyond that. If you look at many modern receivers, they have a 'Direct Sound' or similar button - this is designed to dim all lights on the receiver and output two channel sound for listening to music. Pushing the button a second time would revert to surround operation - if your receiver is capable of this, you are in luck. 

 

End of the day, the headphone out on any receiver/integrated amp is pot luck.  

Just to throw my 2 cent in... I had a Yamaha AVR (a RX something) a couple years ago, when I first joined head-FI. My headphones at the time were the K701. To be honest, they sounded great straight from the Yamaha's headphone jack--better than the ASL tube amp I had at the same time.

Also, I think that a database of receivers' headphone performance would be a great addition to Head-Fi. This would be especially helpful for new HF'ers that want to get their first set of "quality" headphones but don't want to sping for an amp right away or for people looking to simplify.

you can try but most if all HT receivers are pretty much junk when it comes to driving headphones in most cases. mostly the only type of receivers that have good amount of power for most if all dynamic and even ortho's are vintage stereo receivers from the 70's,80's and even early 90's driven from the power amp section with just couple resistors so the speaker amp don't fry the drivers. there even great for driving electrostatic headphones from the speaker outputs.

I can see where that is true. Two years ago I found a 1970s Pioneer receiver on the side of the street which had a headphone jack that was infinitely better that the brand new HK 3490 that I purchased a couple days prior. I returned the HK shortly after finding the Pioneer. Though, sadly it died this summer and wasn't worth the money to repair it.

you could of used it as a learning experience if you didn't want to bother paying for repairs(just saying),but it takes time to learn aboutit and equipment used for the repair process. just my oppinion vintage stereo gear is always a keeper for me. i usually never bothered with or owned an pioneer. i prefer kenwood and sansui and even yamaha to bigger names like marantz and pioneer. 

My friend and I debated refurbishing the Pioneer, but at the time I was starting the research for my dissertation and just didn't havethe time. Also, my wife didn't want a broken stereo hanging around the apartment in the hopes that it would be salvaged in the future.

Why would old receiver makers like Marantz, Yamaha, Denon etc have forgotten how to implement good headphone output these days?  It´s mentioned a lot but is it really true or just the classic good old times is better?. Yesterday I hooked up my LCD-2 directly to my speaker outputs. Have had fun comparing it to the headphone jacket using my SD 3. So it´s not a straight comparison as there is audible differences between the cables. The difference is pretty much what I perceived when comparing these cables on my most revealing solid state amp. I have no sense of the LCD-2 being better driven out of the speaker outputs but I seemed to get a bit more warmth out of it. Less "gravel" from the stock cable but it may be hided by trafomator hum which is quite noticable when not listening to music.

 

So far I have slightly preferred the speaker outputs for party music. For more sublime music headphone output with SD 3. I honestly can´t say which output has the most finess. Or if my dedicated headphone amps have more finess. They just about all have a pitch back blackground. My tube you can get some hint of noise at times but nothing that really catches my attention. They all have their signatures and are all capable of driving the headphones I currently own. I suppose I need a K1000 or HE6 or something to truly test their abiliies.  However my speaker amp can get my LCD-2 to SPL neither of my headphone amps are capable also out of the headphone jack. May be able to destroy the driver on them. Won´t investigate that ;). I haven´t been that impressed with the receiver previously but finding great synergy with the Ref9. A lot of finesse now ;).

 

My amp is a Yamaha RX-V663 home receiver. Probably not audiophile approved but it does scale with better sources apparently. I admit I haven´t really put it to tests much with my previous headphones. It does have a pure direct mode that does really help though using straight it´s still really clean.

 

My previous runs with it over other DACs and other phones I have generally found it to be to warm and have a to small soundstage to my liking. I suspect I was more of a treble head in my old days though :)

oqvist, Marantz takes headphone outputs seriously these days. They've been putting pretty good discrete amps into their CD and SACD players. I enjoy the one in my SA8001. If I had to go with a low budget setup, I'd run a HD-600 right out of the SA8001. I haven't heard their receivers, but I remember seeing headphone jacks on them.

because companies like marantz sold there name to the japanese during the mid 80's and so did most of the other name brand companies after digital and HT became more popular.HT receivers are more about inputs and digital processing where receiver back then all it was an amp with a tuner section for listening to the radio. Marantz stuff is junk in the HT part compared to their products back then during the 70's and 80's. same with other brands like rotel,sansui,yamaha,onkyo,hitachi,sony and so forth. the quadophonic stuff  tho are amazing as well. they were measured better too in the power amp section. during the time of receiver war they measured a watt from the full audio spectrum instead of amps nowdays are only measured at 1khz per watt and was capable of doubling wattage with lower the load no sweat which made'em great for 4ohm and 2ohm speakers.