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Unfortunately my amp was pretty much designed for the K1000 and powers them beautifully, yet somehow I felt that there was a little something missing from the sound of the HE-6. Maybe it was underpowered at 10wpc, but maybe the sound signature just doesn't suit me as well as the LCD-2.
Also I have a problem with everybody saying to get a cheap speaker amp as a substitute to drive the HE-6. In this hobby we strive to get good quality setups and amplification. Many really cheap headphone amps can output just as much current as multi thousand dollar headphone amps and yet it doesn't mean they are anywhere as good. The same mentality needs to be applied to speaker amps, where there are a million things more important than just the power output.
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Larry has his best results with a mass market low end Yamaha 55wpc stereo receiver. This is why I make such a big deal about a low end speaker amp. Surely there is room to go up from there with regard to sound quality, but as this is an entirely new viewpoint for headphones I'd start cheap and see what results others have before forking over for a nice F1 for example.
I would hope that with refinement they are making it possible to use HE-6 on an amp like yours and be able to get the best out of it. It is a bit ridiculous that a 10W quality amp can't run these effectively.
I believe the WA5 is slightly more powerful than my ZDT with 8-ohm speakers, but these headphones are higher impedance than that. The K1000 is 120 ohm and I think the HE-6 is about 50 ohm (I would have to search for the actual impedance). So, I think Fang was implying that the WA5 only has 1.5 watts at the higher impedance of the HE-6. My 8-watt ZDT has only 2 watts at 32 ohm, and only does a "decent" job with K1000 or HE-6.
I brought my K1000 to CanJam '09 and RMAF '09, and both times my K1000 still sounded a little lackluster with the WA5, and similar to my ZDT. So I am not surprised the WA5 didn't seem to be optimal with HE-6 either, since I felt it was on a similar level to my ZDT. Note - my K1000 sounded very similar to Sherwood's pair, so I doubt it was a bad pair of phones. My SAC KH1000 amp was better with K1000, although still not "fantastic" with them. In a similar fashion, it seems these amps are not the best ones to use with HE-6 either, although the SAC amp seemed to give them both more drive and dynamics than these low power transformer coupled tube speaker amps.
Switching to my 55-watt $200 Yamaha receiver, the HE-6 were noticeably better in ALL areas - and despite using a budget 5.1 home theater amp their musical reproduction became effortless and dynamic, impactful, transparent, balanced, detailed, spacious and overall very impressive sounding. Imaging was solid, and while soundstage not huge it was precise and not small at all. With DSP turned on the soundstage did become huge, albeit a little too echoey.
I'm pretty sure I would still pick the HE-6 over my old K1000 with these "headphone" amps, and the HE-6/SAC amp combo easily beat my Sennheiser HE-60/HEV70 amp for about the same price. The K1000 had a bass quality that made them sound like I was listening to a concert from the hallway outside of the auditorium, and when I compared them to my HE-5 LE (with the grill clothe removed) the HE-5 LE had the same mids and treble, with better bass speed and detail, but at the expense of a smaller soundstage than K1000. I finally sold the K1000 this summer after 1.5 years because I was too stupid to try them on my 55-watt Yamaha amp. Thankfully I did try the HE-6 on it, or I might never have discovered just how good they can sound. This means that someday I may give the K1000 another try on a more powerful amp like the Yamaha. I had only used them on four or five different 5-12 watt amps, and I think that just wasn't enough.
I'm one of those people that likes a wide variety of sound signatures, and I own 6-7 phones that I consider my favorites but I don't want to rank my top picks first thru last. I am certain that the HE-6 belongs on that list of favorites, along with my HD800, O2 Mk1, HE-60, Jade, LCD-2, and HE-5 LE (and maybe LA7000 and ESW10 although slower and less detailed than the above, they flow and immerse). Phones I don't own that are also on my favorites list after auditioning them include the Stax Omega, HE-90, HP-1000 and Sony R10.
If you can't invest in more power, then maybe the HE-6 aren't the right choice; but with ample power on tap, even with modest quality gear the HE-6 can really shine.
