NilsJohan
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2012
- Posts
- 4
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- 0
Hi everyone,
I'm planning to buy a pair of HD650 headphones. At the moment I have a good 2.1 speaker setup, but I can't use it at night as the neighbours are not entirely appreciative of loud music in the middle of the night. All my music is digitized, so I play from my computer, then use a HDMI cable to my Yamaha HTR-6240 receiver. I'm open to spend somewhere around $200+, max $350. The way I see it I have three options:
1. Use the preamp output of the HTR-6240 and buy a dedicated headphone amplifier that works well with the HD650 (I looked at some of the Schiit amplifiers, either the Valhalla or the Asgard, or maybe the Maverick Tubemagic A1, but I'm open for suggestions). This would mean basically using the HTR-6240 as a DAC, and spending the money on an amplifier.
2. Buy a great sound card with a headphone amplifier - I was thinking Asus Xonar Essence STX. I would expect that the DAC in the HTR-6240 is better than this (despite having worse specs) because it is on an external unit.
3. Buy a DAC+Amp combination. I am not convinced that this is a good option - since it would basically waste the DAC I already own in the HTR-6240. For this, I was looking at the Maverick Tubemagic D1 (http://www.mav-audio.com/base/product/tube_magic_d1)
The headphone output of the HTR-6240 didn't seem great, since it has pretty high output impedance, so I didn't really consider it an option to not buy an amp at all. At the moment I'm leaning towards option 1, but I was wondering if anyone had any input on what amplifier is a good fit with these headphones and in general whether it's a poor idea.
Thanks a lot for any help!
I'm planning to buy a pair of HD650 headphones. At the moment I have a good 2.1 speaker setup, but I can't use it at night as the neighbours are not entirely appreciative of loud music in the middle of the night. All my music is digitized, so I play from my computer, then use a HDMI cable to my Yamaha HTR-6240 receiver. I'm open to spend somewhere around $200+, max $350. The way I see it I have three options:
1. Use the preamp output of the HTR-6240 and buy a dedicated headphone amplifier that works well with the HD650 (I looked at some of the Schiit amplifiers, either the Valhalla or the Asgard, or maybe the Maverick Tubemagic A1, but I'm open for suggestions). This would mean basically using the HTR-6240 as a DAC, and spending the money on an amplifier.
2. Buy a great sound card with a headphone amplifier - I was thinking Asus Xonar Essence STX. I would expect that the DAC in the HTR-6240 is better than this (despite having worse specs) because it is on an external unit.
3. Buy a DAC+Amp combination. I am not convinced that this is a good option - since it would basically waste the DAC I already own in the HTR-6240. For this, I was looking at the Maverick Tubemagic D1 (http://www.mav-audio.com/base/product/tube_magic_d1)
The headphone output of the HTR-6240 didn't seem great, since it has pretty high output impedance, so I didn't really consider it an option to not buy an amp at all. At the moment I'm leaning towards option 1, but I was wondering if anyone had any input on what amplifier is a good fit with these headphones and in general whether it's a poor idea.
Thanks a lot for any help!