[saer]

Hello Head-Fi'ers!
 
Curious if I would benefit at all by purchasing a E9 for my AD900s, tried searching and have come up empty.
 
My setup would be X-Fi Titanium HD > FiiO E9 > AD900
 
Thanks!

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

Hello Head-Fi'ers!
 
Curious if I would benefit at all by purchasing a E9 for my AD900s, tried searching and have come up empty.
 
My setup would be X-Fi Titanium HD > FiiO E9 > AD900
 
Thanks!

1. I enjoy the AD900s from the E9 very much - big soundstage, mountains of power (provided your source puts out a strong analog signal) and no major quibbles with the sound
 
*BUT*
 
The AD900 are 32-ohm cans and reasonably sensitive - you really dont *need* an amp to enjoy them. There is also a potential issue with output impedance on the E9 - its too high for 32-ohm cans - but to date it hasnt impacted my enjoyment of my music from the amp. nwavguy also found the noise measurements at half-volume were too high, but again its not something that has bothered me. Note that you should use a 1/4" adapter with your AD900's 1/8" headphone jack and plug into the 1/4" socket on the E9 - the 1/8" socket has even higher measured impedance, apparently.
 
End of the day, I may simply have cloth ears, but a lot of his criticisms seem to apply more to sensitive IEMs, particularly balanced armatures, and he did say he doesnt anticipate a problem with fullsize cans like Grado (also 32-ohm). For the asking price, I believe the E9 is very hard to beat. Head-Fi rules prohibit my linking to nwavguy's measurements, but other than the potential issues mentioned above, the remaining measurements were a credit to the team at Fiio.

 

[PurpleAngel]

Quote:

Hello Head-Fi'ers!
Curious if I would benefit at all by purchasing a E9 for my AD900s, tried searching and have come up empty.
My setup would be X-Fi Titanium HD > FiiO E9 > AD900
Thanks!

The Creative Labs Titanium HD already comes with a built in (solid state) headphone amplifier.
And the ATH-AD900 are not really demanding headphones.
I would thing you would want to spend $150 or more a tube headphone amplifier
to make it worth it.