[kahldog]

  I don't understand why you're worried about that. The headphones see only the power corresponding to the volume level you're listening to. It doesn't matter if the amp's maximum output is 1 Watt or 1 kiloWatt, if you're listening at 90 dB SPL, the amp is only putting out 1 milliWatt, and that's what the headphones are seeing.
 
If you actually ran one full watt of power through the LCD-2 and put them on, the volume level would make your ears bleed!

It sounds like you are itching for some kind of debate but I will not oblige you. Carry on with whatever you want to do and I will do the same. You should take great comfort in the vast amount of knowledge you have.

 

[MRC001]

 
It sounds like you are itching for some kind of debate but I will not oblige you. Carry on with whatever you want to do and I will do the same. You should take great comfort in the vast amount of knowledge you have.

I'm not itching for debate, just don't understand why you're concerned about power levels far beyond what anyone could ever listen to. Whatever amp you want to drive the LCD-2 with, 1 Watt of output is about 10x more than most people will ever use. The LCD-2 is easy to drive and doesn't need much power, which gives you a lot of choices in what amp you use.

 

[GrindingThud]

From the Audeze LCD-2 website undefined the specifications tab.....power handling is rated for 200ms:
http://www.audeze.com/products/headphones/lcd-2
Diaphragm excursion: 2.5 mm peak to peak
Sound pressure level (SPL): 130 db (maximum)
Frequency response: 5 Hz - 20 KHz, usable high-frequency extension of 50 KHz
Impedance: 60 Ohms, purely resistive
Efficiency: 90 dB/1 mW
Maximum power handling: 15 W (for 200 ms)
Optimal power requirement: 1-4 W

What you end up with is a rating that can handle a 10VRMS signal (28V) peak swing (1.6W RMS into the LCD-2)

I guess the correct grammar would have been " You Could " leaving the choice to the individual. It serves two purposes that I am aware of.
1. It did in my case lower the noise floor.
2. I was advised by Sophia that the amp needs to see a load that it was designed for. According to Audeze the LCD 2 can take a load of 15watts but they did not specify for how long and that the headphones could be directly connected to an amp having an 80 watt into 8ohm output. To the best of my knowledge 80watts into 8ohms would equate to 12.8 watts into 50ohms.
In closing I have not had any trouble with the Sophia or the LCD 2's using this configuration and find the sound totally amazing. I have compared it directly to my Musical Fidelity M1HPA DAC/headphone amp and while it sounds good it does not hold a candle to the Sophia. I have also tried my LCD's with a Fiio E12 amp and directly out of my RWAK100 Astell Kern player and both sound OK and able to drive the Audeze's to listenable levels but with nowhere near the joy of the Sophia.

 

[kahldog]

From the Audeze LCD-2 website undefined the specifications tab.....power handling is rated for 200ms:
http://www.audeze.com/products/headphones/lcd-2
Diaphragm excursion: 2.5 mm peak to peak
Sound pressure level (SPL): 130 db (maximum)
Frequency response: 5 Hz - 20 KHz, usable high-frequency extension of 50 KHz
Impedance: 60 Ohms, purely resistive
Efficiency: 90 dB/1 mW
Maximum power handling: 15 W (for 200 ms)
Optimal power requirement: 1-4 W

What you end up with is a rating that can handle a 10VRMS signal (28V) peak swing (1.6W RMS into the LCD-2)

Thanks. That is great information and hopefully lifts some of the veil off the topic. There are a number of threads on here regarding voltage divider networks for connecting the LCD 2's
directly to the speakers output terminals of amplifiers. In their most basic form they are a combination of resistors in series and parallel with the speaker outputs to protect the LCD 2 and the amp. Very interesting reading and provides another option, for people to experiment with, in search of a sound "THEY" like.

 

[zilch0md]

CEntrance DACmini !!!

Fantastic with LCD-2 rev1 and rev2, with great power and detail, soundstage, etc

Yes!!

 

[MRC001]

 
Thanks. That is great information and hopefully lifts some of the veil off the topic. There are a number of threads on here regarding voltage divider networks for connecting the LCD 2's
directly to the speakers output terminals of amplifiers. In their most basic form they are a combination of resistors in series and parallel with the speaker outputs to protect the LCD 2 and the amp. Very interesting reading and provides another option, for people to experiment with, in search of a sound "THEY" like.

Ah, so that's what you're doing? With an 8 ohm resistor in parallel with the LCD-2 headphones, you're not only changing the load impedance closer to what the tube amp wants to see, which is important since tube amps are much more load sensitive than transistor amps, but you're also absorbing a lot of the power in that resistor. With 8 ohms in parallel with 50, the resistor is absorbing about 86% of the power, the LCD-2 are getting only about 14% of the power. And that's why you're talking about power levels beyond what the LCD-2 alone can handle.
 
That's interesting, though it makes me curious, if you want that tubilicious sound why not simply use a tube headphone amp? It would have lower power output and designed for higher impedance loads so you wouldn't need resistors across the output?

 

[kahldog]

  Ah, so that's what you're doing? With an 8 ohm resistor in parallel with the LCD-2 headphones, you're not only changing the load impedance closer to what the tube amp wants to see, which is important since tube amps are much more load sensitive than transistor amps, but you're also absorbing a lot of the power in that resistor. With 8 ohms in parallel with 50, the resistor is absorbing about 86% of the power, the LCD-2 are getting only about 14% of the power. And that's why you're talking about power levels beyond what the LCD-2 alone can handle.
 
That's interesting, though it makes me curious, if you want that tubilicious sound why not simply use a tube headphone amp? It would have lower power output and designed for higher impedance loads so you wouldn't need resistors across the output?

I guess I was just adapting to what I owned already. After reading some of the posts on here I thought I would explore this option. I already owned the Musical Fidelity M1HPA and the Fii0 E12 headphone amps neither one tube and wanted to give it a try. I was nervous at first due to my ignorance on the topic but found the courage to give it a try, based on what I had read, and am really happy with the outcome.
I do not have a strong background in electronics and am by no means an expert in the field. I guess that is why I come to these forums to learn from others who share their knowledge and opinions.
I sincerely wish I had an unlimited budget which would allow me to try every piece I could get my hands on. For now I have to pursue my hobby based on the budget I have. It is still fun.

 

[MRC001]

 
I guess I was just adapting to what I owned already. After reading some of the posts on here I thought I would explore this option. I already owned the Musical Fidelity M1HPA and the Fii0 E12 headphone amps neither one tube and wanted to give it a try. I was nervous at first due to my ignorance on the topic but found the courage to give it a try, based on what I had read, and am really happy with the outcome.
I do not have a strong background in electronics and am by no means an expert in the field. I guess that is why I come to these forums to learn from others who share their knowledge and opinions.
I sincerely wish I had an unlimited budget which would allow me to try every piece I could get my hands on. For now I have to pursue my hobby based on the budget I have. It is still fun.

About 15 years ago I had a Wheatfield HA-2. It's an OTL design. It had a great tubey musical liquid midrange with the HD-580 and HD-600 headphones. Not sure whether it can handle the LCD-2 at 50 Ohms. You can find 'em used, and Pete Millett (guy who designed it) made the design public on his site so anyone so inclined can build one himself.
http://www.pmillett.com/wheatfield/ha2.htm

 

[Argo Duck]

I followed the speaker amps for headphones thread for a while. One motivation seemed to be that high quality speaker amps can be bought for less than 'similar' quality hp amps. I suppose the reputedly hard-to-drive HE6 may have started it all.

Whilst happy with my built-for-hp amps I was curious enough to try my two speaker amps with my LCD 2. There's no doubt they sounded great and interestingly the softer transients of one of the two was more obvious through the LCD than through speakers.

 

[SP Wild]

  I don't understand why you're worried about that. The headphones see only the power corresponding to the volume level you're listening to. It doesn't matter if the amp's maximum output is 1 Watt or 1 kiloWatt, if you're listening at 90 dB SPL, the amp is only putting out 1 milliWatt, and that's what the headphones are seeing.
 
If you actually ran one full watt of power through the LCD-2 and put them on, the volume level would make your ears bleed!

 
Why do people keep bringing up the sensitivity and using this as a guideline for music power?  It does not make sense.  The standard for measuring sensitivity is with a singular sine wave at 1 khz.  If you wanna enjoy a 1 khz sinewave at 90 db than 1 milliwatt is just fine.
 
1 freakin khz...correct me if I am wrong, but I am certain any sound has more than a singular khz? I think music might have up to 2 more extra khz, bringing the grand total to about 3 indivdual khz's.  So really we need about 3 milliwatts to drive the additional 2 extra khz's as found in modern music.
 
I think FM radio uses even more khz's to push the khz's through the air...they use tubes to accomplish this.  That is why I like my tube amp...it is capable of more khz's than I will ever use, y'know - for extra headroom.  Computers have JIGAHERTZES....that's a lot.  I wonder why we don't drive headphones with CPU's?

 

[jjacq]

Alright question. From what I understand the Aune T1 does not drive the LCD-2 that well. I was thinking of getting an O2/ODAC stack instead. Now the problem with this is that I don't want to let go of the Aune T1 tubes just yet since I just got a majority of them that I've been wanting to try. So, I thought of this and I would like some input if it can now drive the LCD-2 well:
 
Computer > Aune T1 (as a Tube DAC) > O2 > LCD-2
 
If so, that'll be so great. I think I will sell the Aune eventually and get an ODAC but I really do want to try different tubes for now.

 

[kahldog]

   
Why do people keep bringing up the sensitivity and using this as a guideline for music power?  It does not make sense.  The standard for measuring sensitivity is with a singular sine wave at 1 khz.  If you wanna enjoy a 1 khz sinewave at 90 db than 1 milliwatt is just fine.
 
1 freakin khz...correct me if I am wrong, but I am certain any sound has more than a singular khz? I think music might have up to 2 more extra khz, bringing the grand total to about 3 indivdual khz's.  So really we need about 3 milliwatts to drive the additional 2 extra khz's as found in modern music.
 
I think FM radio uses even more khz's to push the khz's through the air...they use tubes to accomplish this.  That is why I like my tube amp...it is capable of more khz's than I will ever use, y'know - for extra headroom.  Computers have JIGAHERTZES....that's a lot.  I wonder why we don't drive headphones with CPU's?

Sounds like your quite frustrated by the ineptitudes of others. I found in life the more perfect I became the worse other people appeared to me and their foolishness became intolerable.
Did you ever consider gardening as a hobby instead?

 

[MRC001]

   
Why do people keep bringing up the sensitivity and using this as a guideline for music power?  It does not make sense.  The standard for measuring sensitivity is with a singular sine wave at 1 khz.  If you wanna enjoy a 1 khz sinewave at 90 db than 1 milliwatt is just fine.
 
1 freakin khz...correct me if I am wrong, but I am certain any sound has more than a singular khz? I think music might have up to 2 more extra khz, bringing the grand total to about 3 indivdual khz's.  So really we need about 3 milliwatts to drive the additional 2 extra khz's as found in modern music.
 
I think FM radio uses even more khz's to push the khz's through the air...they use tubes to accomplish this.  That is why I like my tube amp...it is capable of more khz's than I will ever use, y'know - for extra headroom.  Computers have JIGAHERTZES....that's a lot.  I wonder why we don't drive headphones with CPU's?

I was going to say you're confusing frequency with power, but it sounds like you're just being sarcastic.
 
You're right that pure 1 kHz tones don't exist in nature. But even though we don't listen to pure 1 kHz tones, sensitivity measurements are still useful. A real musical signal with full spectrum bandwidth at the same amplitude as the 1 kHz wave, will require more power. But it will also be louder than 90 dB. Conversely, a real musical signal with full spectrum bandwidth at 90 dB SPL, would have less amplitude than a pure 1 kHz tone at 90 dB SPL. Either way, the sensitivity measurement is a useful guide - not perfect but useful - to how much power you need for a given listening level.

 

[montanari]

Audeze sound even from the iphone
...
but it s seat, slow..
 
it s all matter how you want to listen and how far you want to go

 

[SP Wild]

 
Sounds like your quite frustrated by the ineptitudes of others. I found in life the more perfect I became the worse other people appeared to me and their foolishness became intolerable.
Did you ever consider gardening as a hobby instead?

 
Ya, I did try gardening...I found a seed in my grass...it is legal to grow 1 plant for personal use.  What the heck...I put this seed on wet cotton and put the cotton in a small puddle of water in a dish and put it on the window sill for sunlight.  To my surprise, the next time I remembered about it, I checked and it had split and was beginning to sprout.  I picked up the dish for a closer look and spilled the seed on the floor...when I went to pick it up...it was really soft and I squished it...it did not grow anymore after that. 
 
I was so happy to have become a father...then so sad to have killed my baby with my own bare hands. 

 
But I agree with you, it is tough being a product of perfection...when I'm not killing my own children.