It's been a long time since college physics, so in the interest of avoiding hours of confusing formulas, can someone help me understand this:
 
The output on the Audioquest Dragonfly Red is listed at 2.1v.  
 
The output on the Onkyo DP-X1 is listed at: 150mW+150mW (balanced), 75mW+75mW (single ended)
 
How does one compare apples to oranges, or milliwatts to volts?
 
 
I'm basically trying to find out if the Onkyo's output will be robust enough to drive some super hungry planar magnetics.
 
Thanks in advance.

Bump--can anyone help me with this issue? I just need clarification for what the conversion from volts to watts would be for the headphone output.

150mV is equal to 0.15V and 75mV is equal to 0.075 V. No the Dragonfly Red puts out 2.1 V then in mV that is 2100 mV

matthewpartrick said:

  It's been a long time since college physics, so in the interest of avoiding hours of confusing formulas, can someone help me understand this:
 
The output on the Audioquest Dragonfly Red is listed at 2.1v.  
 
The output on the Onkyo DP-X1 is listed at: 150mW+150mW (balanced), 75mW+75mW (single ended)
 
How does one compare apples to oranges, or milliwatts to volts?
 
 
I'm basically trying to find out if the Onkyo's output will be robust enough to drive some super hungry planar magnetics.
 
Thanks in advance.

Click to expand...

 
Not sure based in #'s but I have tried LCD-3 with dpa-x1 and for me, around 90-95 out of 150 is a good spot volume wise... To me, dpa-x1 has plenty of power...

matthewpartrick said:

Bump--can anyone help me with this issue? I just need clarification for what the conversion from volts to watts would be for the headphone output.

Click to expand...

Easy answer: there is not a conversion between volts and watts. Their relationship is dictated by Ohm's Law. Specifically you need another variable in order to figure out what you want.

You can ignore ALL of that with your original question though (because you're not actually trying to compare the two, you're trying to determine if one works with a pair of cans); you have power output on the Onkyo and you're trying to determine if you can get sufficient drive level for X headphone, so all you need to know is sensitivity for X headphone, and then its just plug'n'chug from there.

A great tool for calculating such things http://www.digizoid.com/power.php