While I advocate an ultimate fidelity approach to component selection, the truth is we all have tastes in terms of what tonal balance and what attributes we search for.
I use a Woo Audio WA6 (not the + version) which I believe is in budget.
After rolling the rectifier tube (using a 5V6), I find it close to my SCD-XA777ES headphone out, except with better dimensionality, seductive rather than analytical nature, a bit fuller midrange, more graceful highs (without that extra-sharp upper treble), and a tad less definition of lower bass. Great illusion of realism.
If I were the type to seek the hyper-reality of a Headroom amp, I'd tilt toward solid state. But I can listen much longer with this amp and still take delight in the music. Not a detail freak, but I do appreciate the musical information that good detail retreival achieves, good spatial illusion also.
I run the amp on the low gain setting and it seem a bit lower distortion than on the high gain (high impedance) setting. Plenty of volume range.
I haven't heard Darkvoice or others mentioned.
I use a Cardas cable and removed the foam from the phones.
I'm thrilled with my $600 Woo amp. At the last meet I only heard one amp that I liked better and it was balanced, solid state, and would require some mad jack. At 6 bills the Woo would leave you half way to a good set of cables for those 650's.
Anyway its time to decide and let us know how it went.
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