Setup for 400$...

Hey everyone. My room mate is finally considering head-fi gear, mainly because it would help him be more considerate to me.

He was intially thinking HD555, but with the recent price hike they are far less of a bargain. (He liked the 555 with the 595 mod)

The HD600 is slightly more bass heavy (which is his preference) than the 555 so I am thinking that it's a good buy for him. Looks like we can get a pair for 210$ from dakmart, which looks shady as hell but is sennheisers official b stock distributor (I didn't hear about the site until I called sennheiser looking for parts, so while this may change at any minute, at time of posting dakmart is the place to go).

Ideally he'd prefer HD650, but I doubt he'll be able to afford them and that stretches the budget another 100$ for what some would call a very hard difference to discern, especially for a non audiophile.

This leaves me with a final burden to carry:

I only know of two amps that would meet his needs. Thing is, he has a 5.1 setup he favors, and wants to continue using, and the X-Fi is complete trash using analog out into an amp. I'm trying to help him avoid the obvious hurdles there and just get him one of those all in one solutions, I'm actually gonna cover most of the cost of the unit...

Anyway, X-Fi titanium has optical out, which means he doesn't have to do any replugging hokey pokey to listen to headphones. He can use 5.1 for daytime use, and optical out into his aio amp for when he needs to use headphones.

This has led me to two amps:

The Audio-GD Sparrow, and the Zero DAC. I'm think I'd like to see him get a version b, with WM8741 and DIR9001, then it'd be a kid brother to my setup. Plus I know that overall configuration is very warm sounding.

Are there any other options he should consider? Something that is under about 200$ that I could get him for his birthday/christmas?

Another option might be, that I can buy some 650 drivers and transplant them into a dead pair of 580's I've got. It's got brand new 650 headband pad and ear pads so as of right now it just needs drivers.

Okay, so we've determined that the headband is acceptable on my dead 580's so I'm donating them to his cause, and this cuts approximately 250$ off of some 650's so he's happy with it. I'm looking to buy some drivers for it at this point and last time I called sennheiser it was relatively cheap (50$ each for sennheiser HD650 elements).

I am thinking that we should be good to go with just buying the drivers and the sparrow, and me giving him the dead 580's as a gift (the rest of the functional parts, pads, cable, grilles, etc are all good to go).

Will the sparrow satisfy when driving HD650's? Will it be sufficient within his budget?

Also, he's getting this setup instead of a pair of triports. 99%, of the reason he's doing this is I have the shell for the 650's, the drivers to get 'em up and running cost less, and the amp is almost required anyway so that he can just plug in optical. Also triport durability is terrible, so the concern now is will the sparrow drive the 650's to good bass levels and good volume levels overall?

ALSO, would the NFB-12 be worth the extra 45$ over a sparrow with WM8741 and DIR9001?

Just wanted to bump this once, trying to get this figured out asap. >.<

Also asked him about tubes. He was fairly specific that tubes are a no go for him.

Bamp.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Negakinu 

Interested in how you're going to mod the HD650 drivers into the HD580. :) 

All parts are completely interchangeable.

http://www.head-fi.org/t/464758/hd580-with-hd650-driver

My curiosity is in the sparrow's power output and control over the 650's. Will it be what I'm expecting (approx. 80% or so of my setup which is nfb-2 into c-2c)?

Alright guys, I really need to bump this. We've settled on the Audio-GD NFB-12 or the Audio-GD sparrow. Both are described as being warm. 

If we go Sparrow, we're going B version with WM8741 and DIR9001. This will cost us 155$+shipping.

If we go NFB-12, we're stuck with the one option but we'll select DIR9001. This will cost us 200$+shipping.

So question is, which way to go? He's going to be using HD650's exclusively with this amplifier with an optical input.