I have never been a headphone guy preferring the sound of my old Quad electrostats or current Magnepans, but living space and times have changed and I am in need some guidance. I have purchased a pair of HiFiiMan HE5LE headphones and the sound is spectacular to say the least and they are not even broken in yet, I should have gone this route years ago. So here is the question! My current configuration is a Bryston speaker switch box, with a headphone jack that has a 150 ohm current limiting resistor on each headphone channel and will turn two speaker outputs on and or off, so no wiring changes. This is connected to a Grant Fidelity A-348 integrated 50wpc KT88 tube amp on the 4 ohm speaker terminals, as this is my preference for the Maggies. From what I can determine a headphone amp will produce 3wpc max and I do not know if there would be any benefit to one, but there may be something in this equation that I am missing. I hear no hum, buzz or any other transient noise with my current configuration, but would bite the bullet and purchase a headphone amp if there could be an improvement in sound. Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers
Lyle
