200$ amp for AHD2000

I have heard a lot of good stuff about the fiio e7+e9.That, or perhaps one of the Icons from Nuforce will be suitable. Have you looked at all the amps/dacs in the head gear section of the website yet?

In the $200 range it's gonna be hard to beat the FiiO E7/E9 combo.

You might not believe it, but an external DAC/amp makes a huge difference. No matter how nice of headphones you might get, they can only play the analog signal they receive. The headphone jack on a PC probably isn't putting out the cleanest, sharpest, fullest signal around - but a good dac/amp is putting out a good signal to your phones. Even on a high end machine, the speaker/headphone outputs and the digital/analog converters that precede them are going to be among the spots manufacturers like to skimp on. It won't sound "bad," not unless something is defective, but there is a huge difference between "OK" and "amazing," and a new dac/amp can definitely do amazing.   

Anything from spending a couple of bucks on a vintage receiver to the solid states like the asgard.

The d2k isn't all that hard to drive anyways.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ygate 

Might get the E7 for now and see if it really does improve, from there I might upgrade to the E9

I don't know why the fiio series are so widely raved about as an all-around choice for low-high impedance cans. 

The e7 sounds horrible with bass-mid centric cans like the denon d2ks.

But then again you can just use that as a dac.

Look into the fs amplification section and do more research on pairing.

I agree with above, there are so many nice amps out there. Of course you need the dac too. For under $200, I might consider HiFiMan EF2A if you looking for tube amp. Or get the udac2 which can just be a decent dac in the future when (not if) you decide to upgrade to a better amp. Pretty sure there's not many better dacs for the price. Seen a few of those for $70 used. I had the udac2 and it was decent as amp as well. I really wanted a tube amp and ended up with Fournier DAC-1 for $240 and it has done wonders for my DT990's. I was looking for amps a few months ago and pretty much researched everything in the price range you're talking about. The E7 and E9 were pretty low on my list of dac/amp combos. That said, I've never heard them so I can't say how good they are. The last one, based on reviews I've read here that I would consider streaching for is the  Matrix M-Stage. Of course you need a dac for that one. The E7 offers some portability too right. So that could be a consideration. If it's just for desktop I might look further. Here's a picture of my dac/amp for $10 more than E7/E9 combo.

For around $100, Fiio E9 is my recommendation, for around $200, the Matrix M-Stage.

Where did you purchase that Fourier? Is there a website?

I got it on Ebay. No website. Another Head-Fi member did a fairly comprehensive review of it under Fournier HTA amp for more information.

EDIT:

Sorry I was spelling it wrong. It's "Fournier" not "Fourier".