Questions regarding headphone amps for a complete noob

The Senn 558 is a good pair of headphones and easy to drive, meaning they'll perform at their peak level from something like a computer sound card, Ipod etc etc.

 

Those $100 you speak of won't get you very far in head-fi-land I'm afraid so I'd suggest saving that money instead, maybe a live concert?

 

The bare minimum headphone amp I'd recommend is the musical fidelity V-Can, then the Burson HA-160 then... well... then it gets expensive.

 

Hope this gives you some direction.

as I completely agree with what twoears has said I wont add anything. 

but as for the  DAC it means Digital to Audio Converter

this thing takes the ones and zeros of digital music (mp3 for example) and convert it into electrical audio waves. 

it's what a soundard do. It takes the music stored on a hard drive (wich is digital) and "interpret" it to audio waves.

if, for example, you connect a ditgital output device to an analog one (without dac in between), you won't get any sound. 

hope that helps;)

 

Edited by customcoco - 5/12/11 at 4:08pm

but it's not always the case.
there's something called a transport for example, it only extract the informations out of the cd, so you need a dac.
for the pc out, generally, the sound is not good. an outboard dac is better. they cand be fed via usb or firewire (even ethernet for a network) but they retail, usually, for more than your budget.
as for the turntable, it's an analog device so no ones and no zeros, so no dac. the signal is already "music"

Your cd player has it's own built in dac. Outboard dac is preferred if you are not satisfy with your cd player's performance.

Quote:

 

I know Customcoco already did this, but I'll try again, in a slightly different way.

 

First off, let's leave turntables out of this.  They're purely analog, as mentioned above.  

 

If you've got a CD, iPod or laptop, the music is stored in files.  That's to say, 1s and 0s.  Your goal is to convert this into electrical current.  To go from 1s to 0s to electrical current, you need a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter).

 

Anything that you can plug your headphones directly into, for example a portable CD player, has to have a DAC.  This is because the headphones can only see electricity, and not a digital signal.  So the headphone jack is analog.

 

Digital, on the other hand, is transmitted through USB, optical or coaxial.

 

An amplifier, in the most simplistic explanation, increases the amount of power required to move the transducer, which converts your electrical signal into sound.  Hence, an amplifier is working on electricity, and not on a digital signal.  Hence, if you're amplifying something, it's already been converted from digital to analog.

 

Whether the signal has already been amplified or not depends on if the device you're speaking of has an amplifier built in.  The most common consumer PMPs, like iPods and Zunes, don't have built-in amplifiers.  As such, they benefit from external amplification.

 

So your chain will look like this.  Source -> DAC -> Amp.

I assume you now plug your Sennheiser directly into you CD-player, computer or iPod.  Later on, you want to be able to use a turntable, and listen to your LP's on your headphone.  And you have heard / read that, in order to get the best performance, you need a headphone-amplifier.

 

Is that what you are saying?

 

First of all, I do not share the opinion that a headphone-amplifier will enhance the quality of the sound.  For me, the only reason to use a headphone-amplifier is that your headphone needs a more powerful amplifier to drive it (if it does not sound loud enough).  This could be the case for you as the 558 has a slightly higher impedance (50 Ohm), but that depends on how loud you play them.  Another reason could be that you simply have no headphone connection available.

 

Now the turntable you want to / going to buy...  If you do not already have a device (maybe a stereo- or surround-amplifier) that allows you to connect the turntable to, you need to get one.  That is unless you want to get a USB record-player.

 

The term DAC has been explained earlier.  And no, you do not need an extra DAC if you want to use an external headphone-amplifier with the devices you mentioned.

 

I would be useful for us if you had given us more information on how you connect things now (perhaps you already connect your CD-player, iPod and PC to an amplifier).  I think that is the reason why you get confusing answers. 

 

Anyway, I hope this helps.  If not, let us know.

 

Edited by thesurfingalien - 5/13/11 at 2:26am

simply for better sound quality. most of the built-in dacs (except in the high-end) doesn't sound good. I think I know what you're missing, it's that on your cd player you have (probably) a digital out. 

this one needs to be converted, and an analog one, wich doesn't. simple,no? above I have talked about a cd "transport". this thing is not a cd PLAYER, it's just a transport, something that takes the signal out of the cd and then, send it to the dac. there's one in every player.

 

see your player as a restaurant (weird I know). 

the chef (the transport), takes the ingredients (the signal), cook them and then give them to his assistant (the cable) who give it to the clients (the dac). 

source (transport) - cable - dac - amp. 

Edited by customcoco - 5/13/11 at 4:25am

Chuke002, your ipod has pretty good dac built in. If you can achieve sufficient volume at less than 60% then you probably will be ok without amp.

Also highly recommend lossless format as your music source if played from ipod/laptop.

Can you support that claim at all?