HE-500, LCD2, D5000, DT770, SR80, on a speaker amp (Emotiva mini-X A-100) Project

I was playing around with my interface box last night and doing some serious listening tests (serious for me anyway). I'm going to have to dig out my sound level meter so I can match listening levels to take a better listen because I couldn't tell the difference between resistor network and no resistor network. A couple of times I even forgot which setup I was listening to and while thinking, "Yea, the dynamics do seem to be a little reduced with the network," then looked down and realized I was listening with just the XLR to banana adapter.
 
I used my 45 watt per channel 6L6 push-pull tube amplifier and the 12.4 decibels of attenuation (R2=6ohms, R3=2ohms) moved my maximum listening volume from 9 o'clock to 11:30 which is about where I wanted it. I never had a noise floor hiss issue with this amp so no difference there. If you're running a 100+ watt per channel amp you may want to go with R2 of 7 ohms and R3 of 1 for 18.3 dB of attenuation. After a couple of hours of listening the R2 6ohm 5watt resistors were not even warm to the touch, but that is with a pretty low wattage amp.

No resistors needed for HE-6. Sounds great with the jacks connected to the speaker taps. 
 
For more sensitive 'phones, resistors are needed unless you reduce the gain on your player.
 
I don't know, but resistors may provide SQ improvements irrespective of the sensitivity: gain issue.
 

The better resistors are quiet but I can't see how they'd help.

The amp might perform better with higher output

Some amps might perform better when pushing more current too, in which case just a series resistor works against this.

Yeah.. It makes sense to have the amp driving the load it is designed for.

For those who do not feel comfortable soldering and making their own wire, and do not want to spend a small fortune on custom cables, here is a simple and cheap way to connect your headphones with any stock 1/4" TRS tip to the Emotiva MiniX a-100. Simply buy the following:
 
2 of http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0010CEIH8
+
1 of http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000068O5D
=
~$20
 
No soldering or wire stripping, just plug and play. Only thing is the banana plug part of the cable has black and white wires, rather than black/red. The black is ground and white is positive (red on Emotiva). Wires on the banana plugs will be facing up when connected correctly to the MiniX. I actually connected it backwards the first time, and it shorted. I was lucky nothing was damaged and the Emotiva shut itself down. Also, connect this ONLY for amps that have a common ground like the Emotiva MiniX. Connecting this to balanced or separated ground amps such as Class-T amps or monoblocks will cause a short! This also will NOT work for tube speaker amps, as they need added resistors to match impedances, and large impedances (> 8Ω usually) will damage the amp. Only use for solid state amps with a common/shared ground like the Emotiva MiniX a-100.
 
 
Correct setup with Emotiva MiniX a-100:
 

^ That was for MalVeauX to quote and add to the first post. People seem to want an easy and cheap way to connect their headphones to the MiniX, and I've mentioned this many times, but it just gets buried.

sonido said:

  ^ That was for MalVeauX to quote and add to the first post. People seem to want an easy and cheap way to connect their headphones to the MiniX, and I've mentioned this many times, but it just gets buried.

Click to expand...

 
Added, thanks!
 
Very best,

sonido said:

For those who do not feel comfortable soldering and making their own wire, and do not want to spend a small fortune on custom cables, here is a simple and cheap way to connect your headphones with any stock 1/4" TRS tip to the Emotiva MiniX a-100. Simply buy the following:

2 of http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0010CEIH8
+
1 of http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000068O5D
=
~$20

No soldering or wire stripping, just plug and play. Only thing is the banana plug part of the cable has black and white wires, rather than black/red. The black is ground and white is positive (red on Emotiva). Wires on the banana plugs will be facing up when connected correctly to the MiniX. I actually connected it backwards the first time, and it shorted. I was lucky nothing was damaged and the Emotiva shut itself down. Also, connect this ONLY for amps that have a common ground like the Emotiva MiniX. Connecting this to balanced or separated ground amps such as Class-T amps or monoblocks will cause a short! This also will NOT work for tube speaker amps, as they need added resistors to match impedances, and large impedances (> 8Ω usually) will damage the amp. [COLOR=FF0000]Only use for solid state amps with a common/shared ground[/COLOR] like the Emotiva MiniX a-100.


Correct setup with Emotiva MiniX a-100:

Click to expand...

Actually, no soldering required. Just remove the heat sink to one side, loosen the speaker tap nuts, and place your spades into the taps and re- tighten the tap nuts.

Anyone interested in a modded Emotiva Mini-X with 1/4" TRS plug in the front panel.  All ready to go.  PM grizzlybeast.  Apparently, this forum's sales area has some F..... s....d rules and yeah some idiots too.

koiloco said:

  Anyone interested in a modded Emotiva Mini-X with 1/4" TRS plug in the front panel.  All ready to go.  PM grizzlybeast.  Apparently, this forum's sales area has some F..... s....d rules and yeah some idiots too.

Click to expand...

Are you starting up that business soon?

sonido said:

Are you starting up that business soon?

Click to expand...

never...

Okay I'm sold on Emotiva (with Quickie) with the HD800 as well. It's better than Crack. There I said it. Koiloco will agree with me that it pairs well with the Emotiva. It's something with our batch. We both bought from Amazon during the special $890 sale and the serial numbers are 25XXX to 26XXX. It's not sibilant at all. Koiloco and I have listened to the same HD800 that belonged to a mutual friend of ours, and we both thought it had sibilance and treble problems, but when we received ours today, those problems were nonexistent. We did some measurements to confirm this. My set peaks at 5.5KHz and then tapers off. Worn for hours now, no fatigue at all. In fact, I get more fatigue from HE-500 and its bass impact. Koiloco said he tried our mutual friend's HD800 with the Emotiva and it sounded horrible, which is a stark contrast to our HD800s we received today paired with the Emotiva.
 
Seriously wondering if Sennheiser did a recent revision.
 
One drawback is it seems to have a higher noise floor than HE-500 when paired with Emotiva.

sonido said:

Okay I'm sold on Emotiva (with Quickie) with the HD800 as well. It's better than Crack. There I said it. Koiloco will agree with me that it pairs well with the Emotiva. It's something with our batch. We both bought from Amazon during the special $890 sale and the serial numbers are 25XXX to 26XXX. It's not sibilant at all. Koiloco and I have listened to the same HD800 that belonged to a mutual friend of ours, and we both thought it had sibilance and treble problems, but when we received ours today, those problems were nonexistent. We did some measurements to confirm this. My set peaks at 5.5KHz and then tapers off. Worn for hours now, no fatigue at all. In fact, I get more fatigue from HE-500 and its bass impact. Koiloco said he tried our mutual friend's HD800 with the Emotiva and it sounded horrible, which is a stark contrast to our HD800s we received today paired with the Emotiva.

Seriously wondering if Sennheiser did a recent revision.

One drawback is it seems to have a higher noise floor than HE-500 when paired with Emotiva.

Click to expand...

I remember reading that there was, Maybe, a secret révision past 20XXX.