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I do have an old Aiwa AV-X200 5.1 receiver, but all it has are red and white in's. I can't use that to emulate surround sound on my headphones, can I? If I use EAX in games, the emulation will be gone by the time it goes through my receiver and then to my headphones I'd imagine. What do you think?
I'm not sure what you mean that I won't find a tube amp for 75$, I linked to a tube amp that was only 60 USD on ebay. Is that I low quality, worthless piece of junk?
Also, atothex, I want to keep my DPI Pro 700's. I got them for 37 $ shipped off ebay and I heard they're great cans. I don't really want to invest in cans of higher quality than these, because then I'd be looking around the 300 $ or so area.
Yes, you can use the Aiwa receiver in two-channel mode, but most headphones are not able to deliver a surround experience. There are aftermarket processors, etc. that give a surround-like experience, but I don't have much experience with them and they rarely get discussed around here. You might want to check a home theater forum.
I wouldn't buy that $60 tube amp. First, it's a hybrid and second, I'm not sure what it is, exactly. If you look at the
12AU7 datasheet, you'll see that it really doesn't do much of anything at 24V (like the wallwart that amp comes with) and only gets linear running with a plate voltage of 100V-250V. They are claiming that it is class A, and I'm not sure how they're getting at least 100V into the tube. And if they are, they really should be doing it with a better transformer. What
might be going on is that the tube is mostly there for decoration. You only need 6.3V to light the filament so it looks like the tube is "working," but it really doesn't amount to anything more than a lightbulb to tell you that it's on. People aren't much interested in cheap solid state amps, but stick a tube in there - even as decoration - and people take notice. I could be wrong, but I'm leery of these very, very cheap amps. If you want to correctly supply a 12AU7, you can use something like a Hammond HX-369AX which sells for about $60. Add some filtering caps, diodes, etc. for a basic power supply and you're already at $75. Keep in mind that this is the cost of raw parts without shipping, not including labor, taxes, overhead, etc. that businesses have to pay.
If you're looking for great performing, inexpensive headphones, you'll have a hard time going wrong with either the Sony MDR-V6 or the Grado SR-60.