I went today (Saturday) with my daughter.  Didn't spend much time with cans - so much to see and hear - but I wanted to try the HE 1000's    Open and warm, but maybe a bit mild.  Wish I could have listened to HE-6's to compare; didn't see any, but didn't ask.   The lovely young lady at the...

Not HE-6, but HE-5LE's here; nearly as difficult to drive Just finished an impedance matching box. Listening now off the 16 ohm speaker taps on my DIY PP 6B4G amps. Running 30 ohm resistors in parallel (in box) so that the amps see roughly 16 ohms; no resistance in series to pad the output...

I assume it's a misspelling of the word "shoddy".   Shoddy was the name of a cheap fabric made by Northern profiteers during the American civil war; it was made by pressing scraps of recycled wool felt together.  It was a disaster, usually falling apart days after it was issued to troops.  If...

I'm certainly no engineer...  I have just "played" with this stuff for a while.  Rolling your own is an incredible education.  Still learning, too - I really keep things pretty simple.

I'm curious; were adjustments made to the amp(s) used in the comparison in order to take into account the varying forward voltage drops of the different rectifiers?  Typically, a 5AR4 type has a low drop, giving a higher B+ voltage to the amp; a 5R4 a greater drop, with a 5U4G type somewhere in...

no biggie... wish I would have picked up a vintage Superscope era Marantz solid state receiver or integrated a few years ago when they were cheap. now they're "collectible"

Would if I could, the Marantz SA8004 is an SACD player & DAC, no amp.  Just a "convenience" headphone amp and 1/4" output jack.

I managed to find a pair of NEW "open box" HE-5LE's!! Arrived Friday; I have done a bit of casual listening from the headphone output of my Marantz SA8004. The Marantz can drive them to moderate levels - but no more (not knocking the SA8004, it's not intended to be a 'phone amp). Even with...

Anybody use a switch after the speaker taps?   I have a pair of HE-5LE's on the way; not HE-6's but a similarly difficult drive.  Lower impedance tho, 38 ohms.  I plan to run these off of the 16 ohm speaker taps on a DIY tube amp, push-pull 2A3 that puts out about 12W into 8 ohms (actually...

Another “which cans for teen daughter” question…   My daughter is tired of crummy earbuds, and wants a set of real headphones.  She likes the V-Moda one friend has (does not know model, friend said >$200); she hates the Bose and Beats most kids have.    Her self-imposed spending limit...

Following up on my earlier post on using a 300B tube amp with 16 ohm taps to drive the HE-6 or HE-5LE.....    the below link shows a builder using the Diytube.com get-set-go DIY single-ended 300B amp (pc board based build)  to drive Audeze planar magnetics (mentions Hifiman in the article...

Quote: whoa, 007's and 009's are too rich for me!  407's are more my budget, so your SR-Lambda's would probably give me the Lambda "house sound", at least;  yours are normal bias, right?.    I listen to a wide variety of music; tonality and coherency (particularly in "big" music) are my...

Quote: Nope - didn't know about it - thanks for the tip.  I'll look for it next time I'm out that way.

Quote: Thanks.  Really hate to miss it, I'm close to making a directional decision of stats vs planars (Stax vs. Hifiman), getting to hear both in real listeners' systems the same day is tough to pass up.   Also want to hear that Leben. 

Quote: Sterling, @ Newman Catholic.  Daughter's school is Aurora Christian, defending 3A champs.  Should be a good game, looks like Newman is run oriented, ACS is pass oriented but ran all over Winnebago last week in a 2nd-half blowout.    Davenport - I picked up a beat up Pilot console...

Looks like I'm out, my daughter's high school's football team made it to the semi-finals, and it's clear out by the Quad Cities on Saturday arternoon.

Speakers first.  I am a DIY type with a limited budget, headphones have always been far down on the list.   Haven't had good cans for a couple of decades, have not wanted to settle for just ok but never the budget for excellent.  Going to change that within 12 months.   My preference in...

Quote: Quote:   Any tube experts out there?  I think I have my head around this, direct drive from speaker taps on transformer coupled tube amps is "depends"...  Take it all with a grain of salt, I'm pretty much self-taught on DIY tubes over the last 15 years, I'm not an engineer...

Count me in.    I bought a couple of Zigis' DIY simple 6DJ8 hybrid amp boards;  will bring one for show & tell if it arrives by then (probably won't).   Looking forward to listening to some set-ups; I haven't had decent headphones for quite a while. 

Quick question on Bifrost and USB vs S/PDIF - assuming I am restricted to a laptop w/ USB out only, would I get better sound with the Bifrost optional USB board, or with a Hiface 2 USB/spdif converter?     My apologies if this has been asked before....