Dickies
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2015
- Posts
- 194
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- 39
At what point would a headphone amp be overkill for the H6s (1st Gen)?
Would mid-tier level (Audeze Deckard / Cavalli Liquid Carbon / Audio-gd C-2 / Audio-gd NFB-1AMP) be as far I would need to go to squeeze out 100% performance or would there still be some sense (performance gain) going a little higher to a low tier-one headphone amp (HeadAmp GS-X / Cavalli Crimson / Audio-gd HE-9 / Audio-gd Master 9)?
I personally didn't like the deckard I bought an oppo ha1 instead of it.
As an audio-gd nfb-27h owner who has never heard his h6's sound better that from that unit it pretty easy for me to say buy the master 9! BUT if you're only going to be using with h6's it's WAY overkill, the h6's at a loud listening level from my 27h uses under 3% of its power so 97% is going to waste, the master 9 is fully balanced you'd be mad to let that go to waste just using it single ended all the time.
That said if you're thinking of getting other headphones down the road that require more power or more sophisticated amplification then by all means get one of the power monsters you listed but if not there's no need imo.
I'm not sure what your dac plans/ intentions are but considering you listed a couple dac/amp's so what I'd suggest you do is get one of the really combo units that will power h6's amply like a mojo, hugo, hugo2, benchmark dac 3, I myself am considering moving on from the 27h and getting a hugo2 as I don't think I need the power.
A couple of other combo units that I have no idea if they pair well with the h6's but I think are worth a mention are jotumheim, woo wa8, aune s6.
So I guess what I'm really saying is they don't need power they need a good dac and a little power that doesn't get in the way of the dac.