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"Driving" headphones

post #1 of 3
10/6/11 at 8:13pm
Thread Starter 
I was under the impression that impedence is what determines how hard it is to drive headphones. My friend just bought sennheiser HD595, I'm going for denon d2000, and in the future I might go for either D7000 or Audeze LCD2. the 595 have a 50 ohm impedance, the d2000 have like 30 i believe. The LCD2 have 60 but the Hifiman HE5le has only 38.

Yet, the Hifiman over ear is extremely difficult to drive, as is the LCD2.....

How do you tell what you need to really drive headphones if the impedence has so little to do with it? What is enough to drive my friend's HD595? What about my D2000? I plugged his 595 directly into my Gamma2 f++ and found that they sound just like my Audioengine A5's. The treble is brighter and more apparent, but they have practically 0 bass (I'm coming from monster turbines, meelec m11+, bose on ears, and creative ep-630). They sound like my A5's when I have my subwoofer turned off. I figured this has something to do with amplification...

I'd love to have this clarified for me.
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post #2 of 3
10/6/11 at 8:50pm

Senn HD 595 is bass shy, all the current and voltage swing in the world is not going to change that characteristic.

 

A lot of low impedance head phones like the LCD2 (orthos), Grado PS1000 etc really do benefit from

a lot of current being fed to them. Other headphones with higher impedances benefit from voltage

swing.

 

If you try out an amp and find that the required volume is reached at the 10 ' clock to 12 o clock position

then there is a good chance that it is doing a very good job at driving them. Having said that, I've experienced

this phenomena only to try the same headphone with a different amp at the same position and find that

it does a better or worse job!

 

 

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post #3 of 3
10/6/11 at 9:48pm
Thread Starter 
I see. I was going to build a mini3 kit around christmas and in the meantime power the d2000's with an E5 or E11 by Fiio. I am pressing my buddy to get fiio's E7 or one of iBasso's usb dac/amp offerings. He is still on laptop sound. I'm also trying to get him to stop putzing about and redownload his music in lossless or 320kbps mp3 format. Right now its all standard itunes m4a or m4p files at about 240 kbps or something.

Is there any amps that are recommended for d2000 or amp/dac combos for hd595? or is that volume thing the only thing to go by apart from RMAA tests?
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