ART Headamp4 + HD-650 / DT-880 / AH-D2000 - Page 3

Depends which version.  If they are the 80ohms I'd say the PA2V2 would probably work alright.  If it's the 250 ohm version the Art may be beneficial.

 

Isnt the PA2V2 portable? the ART4 isnt.

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Define "audiophile grade".  Are we talking poor performing, but over priced and well spoken of?  Are we talking specific brands?  Are we talking a dollar amount?

Could this power 600 ohm DT880's? I had the Presonus HP4 for a time and it couldn't push my Beyers as far as I wanted.

Do you think any of our fellow Head-Fi addicts, you know the ones with $1,000 head amps, could part with $50 and do a blind comparison?

 

I built a cheap CMOY amp, most likely with a cheap op-amp, and I'm getting really sick right now of reading comparisons between $20 amps, $100 amps, $300 amps and $500 amps, tubes and OP-Amps, and solid state and DAC and what have you.

 

I've been trying to get a handle on all of this, and I'm starting to wonder if love is the only difference between a powerful, $50 commercial amp in a cheap looking box and a homebuilt $250 desktop kit.

 

I do 90% of my music listening at my office desk on an iMac with an onboard sound card. The sound through my DT-770's is mildly improved by my crappy CMOY, but I don't want to put batteries into it and the design is such that it doesn't lend itself well to an external power supply.

 

I just read some stellar reviews for the Behringer UCA202 USB interface. I also read some great reviews for this Headamp4. I can get both, for $76, shipped free to work, and never have to think about this again. Does this sound reasonable to anyone else?

Well, at worst you're only out 76 bucks.

Reviews are worth reading I suppose but really unless you find someone who:

a) has a headphone model somewhat like yours,
b) listens to music somewhat like yours and
c) has owned more than the one product they are reviewing

you're not really reducing your uncertainty much by reading one or a hundred such "reviews", be they good or bad.

It doesn't look like anyone is stepping forward with experience to share on a DT770 and a CMOY or a DT770 and a Behringer, Headamp, etc. Sometimes you just can't find any good information to inform a specific choice like that. You may be the first one to make the buy and offer up a report here.

Complaining about the unwillingness of high-end equipment owners to buy cheap amps for comparison or throwing off on their judgment by speculating that they are imagining things does not get you any closer to your goal, does it?

 

 

A CMoy may be cheap, but if you built it well it should not be "crappy". Maybe I've missed something, but what's wrong with using it with an external power supply? I've built a basic OPA2134 CMoy and ran it from a linear regulated 24V power supply. Seemed to work well enough. But if you're talking about switching mode power supplies, then I get it.

 

Many of these 4-in-1 pro audio amps are basically just four CMoy circuits inside one box. Like I said, nothing wrong with a CMoy, but getting a new amp with the same circuit may not be for you if you're looking for a change.

 

Also, as others have pointed out, the Headamp4 has an output impedance of about 50 ohms. It'll work fine with headphones that are rated for more than that, like the DT770/80 for example. But not so good for low impedance IEMs and those 32 ohm Audio-Technica/Grado headphones.

 

Not sure why if you're looking for audio quality per dollar you're shopping 4-in-1 distribution amps. Kind of like wanting a good steak but shopping for a three-for-a-dollar deal on hamburgers.

Because I couldn't seem to find a highly-rated single-jack desktop amp with an AC adapter for $50. Please prove me wrong, I'd love to settle my situation for under $100.

 

My CMOY is an 18v model from Sumo Electric. The kit cost $15 or $20. The layout of the board itself is kind of mediocre, with power leads soldered directly to cap legs and a cheap-looking PCB. It's intended to be run on 2 9v batteries which appear to be on separate traces (each battery is hooked up individually to a DPDT switch. I've tried combining the batteries on a SPST switch, and it sort of works but is unstable (crashes often). I've also tried it on an 18v unregulated power supply with the same results. Finally, the whole kit is actually too big to fit into an Altoids tin, even after I filed down the corners of the PCB to make room for the second battery.  It's a cheaply-priced, cheaply designed kit. I was considering moving the parts over to a Radio Shack breadboard, but I thought it was too much work for a kit that seemed wonky to begin with. I've tried to run this kit on 9v before (like many quality CMOY kits) and it really doesn't work at all. I was just hoping that for less than a price of a better Altoids amp, I could just buy a solid mass-produced desktop model and be done with it. Until I decided to put it in a nicer enclosure, that is.

No, and you're right. I do sound like a jerk. I just wrote this post after realizing the amount of time I've spent trying to find an amp that suits my specifications. As a connoisseur in other respects, I understand that perhaps I haven't developed the ear for the subtle differences between similar products. I just do know there is such thing as diminishing returns, especially in boutique electronics. I've gotten a sense that the quality-to-price curve is logarithmic, and I'd like to find that spot where the increase in quality slows, just before the price skyrockets.

 

Maybe I should just buy a built amp from DTS Labs, wire in an adapter for a decent power supply, and save for a DAC down the line?[

 

The only two amps I've used were a Portaphile V2^2 a few years back and now a Schiit Asgard. The Portaphile was a fairly fancy but not particularly "high end" portable that I ran off an 18VDC wall-wart. But between the wall-wart and the amp I spent darned near 200 bucks. I just wanted something that would deliver a decent voltage swing which put me in the class beyond the 3V and 9V mini-amps and what have you. Still a pretty silly amount of money for buffered op-amps even if it did have pretty impeccable construction quality and lots of premium bits-n-pieces.

Since I quickly discovered that portable was not a concern for me in an amp, this time around I went with the AC-powered, discrete FET Asgard which strangely enough cost (used) pretty much that same 200 bucks. A far better performance-per-dollar proposition but still it seems to come in denominations of $200 only! I wish I knew a half-as-good, half-as-expensive alternative to recommend to you, man. Either the Portaphile or the Asgard seem worlds better to me than something like the headphone jack of a receiver or computer audio interface. I'd be totally gobsmacked if the hypothetical $1,000 equivalent were as much better than the Asgard as the Asgard seems to whatever is the next step down.