Okay so got my EF2A in today and started playing around with it.
Headphones
Studio Beats by Dre
Akg 240
Grado sr80i
So I am very new to this so I will give you my initial impressions. First off I am still using the stock tubes that came with it but I will eventually upgrade them. They are running off my computer which has a Creative xfi titanium sound card. But so far I only ran this amp with the built in DAC. My old amp was a behringer ha 400 which was nice because it was a 4 channel amp and I could have all my cans attached and still have my computer speakers on without having to keep disconnecting and reconnecting them. So I will try to compare the two amps. The ef2a installed no problem, computer needed no disk or additional drivers other than what is normally in windows 7. I did have an issue where it didn't work after one of my restarts but reconnecting the usb cable fixed the issue. The sound difference between the the 2 amps is crazy. For one any bass at higher gain on the ha400 caused a distortion in all my cans. Also the beats hated the ha400 all together the power it was putting out must not have gone good with the internal amp on the Studios.
The ha400 did sound great on guitar tracks that didn't have much bass. But seemed to sound much better with the akgs over the grado. In higher listening levels the grados bass output seemed distorted, and the akgs lacked any bass output whatsoever.
Now over to the hifiman. I haven't tried the studios on it yet but I also just sold them so I can order akgs 701s. The sound on both headphones seems fuller. in certain songs it feels like I can hear smaller back round instruments that I couldn't really discern in the ha400. I can easily attain higher listening levels without distortion. And bass actually exist on the akgs, even though it still is more prominent in the grados. The music I listened to varies greatly. I used some mp3s but mostly Flac files for music. I listened to daft punk, foo fighters, evanesance, john mayor, lmfao and others. The sound is so different between the two amps. I am not sure how much of that is due to the DAC in the EF2A compared to my sound card. But it just feels like the music coming out of the EF2A is so much fuller and that I am actually getting more out of my cans. I will post more info as i test more i only have a few hours in so far. So let me know if you have any questions.
but some others on here would be able to tell you more. From what I've heard, the AKG's like SS more, but since it's a hybrid amp, they might fare well too.
