sphinxvc
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- May 28, 2010
- Posts
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- 109
Just swapping out tubes for other ones and seeing how it changes the sound (usually for the better obviously).
Tube rolling lets you change the voicing of the amp to compliment the headphone.
OTL amps can and do sound really good with the 70x. You can't go cheap though as mentioned. I've used an otl amp with the 701s for about 5 years. Output impedance is low (20 ohms) and .5 w output drives them very nicely.
Cheap tube amps in general sound bad through any headphone since they sound "tubey". Most tube amps under $500 sound tubey to me so listening to a similarly priced tube amp will sound atrocious. I haven't heard a SS amp that beats the synergy good tube amps have with the K701 IMO.
the dynalo and m^3 are easily superior to the canamp.
Except the person I was quoting was suggesting the user purchase $300 tube amps, which from my own experience are definitely in the "poor sound quality" range of synergy with the AKG 70x. In that price range, nothing surpasses the CanAmp. While I do suspect high quality tube amps, in the $500+ may present a different story, I have not yet experienced any such setups yet and thus cannot speak about them.
Which OTL amp was this?
Like most myths, this one is rooted in some truth. Generally speaking, high impedance headphones will be more difficult to drive, especially those with 300 to 600 ohm impedance. This is not an absolute!
The second part of the equation is the sensitivity rating of the headphones. This tells you how many dB the headphone outputs at either 1 mW of power or 1V. This is equally important!