Fiio E17 to drive Sennheiser HD650?

From what I have heard, they should be able to drive the hd650 somewhat ok, but a better amp would do the hd650 more justice. If you do not need a dac, why not try buying an amp only at the same budget because it should be better at driving the hd650.

GL

Seems like you will need a dac too because listening from a laptop will usually benefit from one because most laptop comes with low quality sound chip.

GL

I don't think a e17 really drives hd600/650s good

the fiio e9 dose a good job.

I suspect the E17 would sound better than an E11, though I have not personally heard the E17, that is the impression I've seen from others.  If that is the case, the E11 powers the HD650 somewhat OK.  In fact, I even preferred the sound of the E11 to the sound of my $350 Headroom Micro (desktop, old model) for HD650.  The old Micro happened to create a congested midrange that the E11 did not.   However when compared to an amplifier that is an even better match such as the Schiit Lyr or (much to my surprise) the headphone out of my Marantz integrated amp, HD650 jumps to a new level.

 

So I would say you'll probably get it to work, and it'll probably even sound fairly good.  But just know that the HD650s are still capable of far more than that, and don't wrongly accuse the HD650 of being the limiting factor as I once did.  They are not
 

If you don't mind a very analytical sound, you may wish to look into the JDS built Objective 2.   The level of analytical presentation was, to me almost brutally sterile with HD650, but some folks prefer that kind of sound.  You can also get an O2+ODAC for a little more than your budget if you need the DAC too.  The ODAC supposedly warms up the O2 a little, and is certainly going to be better than straight laptop output.

Edited by IEMCrazy - 9/24/12 at 8:34am

 

That should work out well.  One thing to keep in mind is just how high you want to go with the HD650.  They scale far...as in they keep sounding better well into the thousands of dollars of gear.  So the E9 is definitely more power, but they can still continue to improve from there.  So if you had any designs of moving into higher tiers, you may want to consider that route before you start at this level.

 

However, the E9 is certainly competent and the E17 + E9 is a nice budget setup for a PC-based headphone rig with the HD650.  You could definitely go that route.

I'm using the HD 800 with fiio e17

and it has enough power to drive them.

The e17 will drive them but not well. I just listened to it on high gain and it was just okay. It got a lot better with an e09+odac...much better. And then there is another level with amps in the Schitt series as well as others. 

WHAT!?!?! you get sound out of them but that's not using them nearly to there potential.

I just tried this and I thought the e11 was better, the e17 sounds underpowered