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Full size/home amps, performance with headphones?

post #1 of 4
1/6/11 at 2:13pm
Thread Starter 

Hi everyone,

 

I have been looking around lately for some amp to link with my Shure SRH-840.

 

Logically, I gave and am still giving a thorough look at the dedicated amps for headphones; however, I was asking myself how did a full-size amp performs on its headphone output. As a matter of fact, they are able to drive speakers in a very nice way, but that ain't the same outputs.

 

Does the headphones output benefit from the whole amp composants?

 

I stumbled on the Marantz PM 5004, seems like a good investment to me. Any recommendations? At the same price, does it perfom better than a dedicated headphone amp?(Graham Slee novo for example)

 

Thank you in advance!

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post #2 of 4
1/6/11 at 3:22pm

I still have my nearly 20 year old CD60, but I didn't buy it just for the headphone amp. I actually like the Marantz CDPlayers, and that's jsut a bonus. Like up to now Marantz still puts headphone outs and a volume control when Sony either threw the feature out or put in a fixed output head-out, which I think is for wireless cans. While I consider this a bonus for a CDPlayer, if it's an amp, it's only a bonus if you have a speaker rig. Otherwise, go for the dedicated headphone amp. Not much in the way of designing the circuit would a speaker amp benefit a headphone out, although some sound decent - but still, it's just a good bonus. If anything, the only advantage speaker amps have is multiple inputs; but you can just get a DAC and connect the PC/laptop and CD/iPod transport through SPDIF and/or USB.

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post #3 of 4
1/6/11 at 3:47pm

IME the killer using a speaker amp for headphones is noise. If its quiet enough try it out.

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post #4 of 4
1/24/11 at 11:47am
Thread Starter 

Does it make any difference if the amp is labelled Class A(for the headphone output I mean, it obviously does for the speakers)?

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