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I realise this may be a rather 'naive' question, but has anyone tried the T1 with a low end amp, like the Fiio E9, and compared it to mid-higher end amps? I realise I'm provoking the 'they won't drive them at their best potential' response, and I realise not many will have tried such an outrageous paring.
(I'm interested if anyone has actually A/B'd them, as opposed to people guessing that it won't be anywhere near good enough)
I'd much rather get the T1's and then upgrade the amp/dac later, as I really liked the T1's sound.
So I have T1s with my Parasound PLP 2000 as the amp for them. It's a high current amplifier for the headphone but I see conflicting reviews as to how good it is compared to other desktop amplifiers, and I don't have any other desktop amps to compare it with yet. (and it seems to be current biased rather than voltage which my understanding is what you'd want for high impedance cans.)
Everything I've run it with it, it does a better job than my d10 cobra, on the otherhand, I'm also feeding it through the Parasound 2000 DAC which is supposedly a pretty decent dac, and I'm feeding it balanced.
At any rate, I have the same questions as you do. Right now I'm comparing an AT AD2000 vs the T1. The T1s don't do anything bad at all, although they definitely seem darker than the ATs throughout. The ADs are a bit hit and miss. I hear them on some tracks and I get a wow factor that I don't get on most of the T1 tracks, but a bunch of other tracks seem too bright, or fatiguing. I seem to get a little more detail retrieval out of the ADs at the moment, but it's hard to tell because they are definitely brighter. I'm tending to prefer the T1s on my darker tracks and I'm almost getting a warm and fuzzy presence feeling to those tracks that I like the presentation of better than the AD2ks. (Like Van Morrison. Also, I think that in direct head to head comparison I'm getting a much more analytical sound (and details) from the T1s out of this amp, then I do from my ESW10jpns. Also, they blow away my HF5s out of the same setup.
Short answer, I have an amp that is probably not a very good pairing with the T1s and they are at least on par if not better than a number of other quite good headphones that should be properly driven (or even well driven with my amp) and I like them better in almost every case than my ESW10jpn and cobra D10 optical pairing (which out of context I find to be quite a nice combination) and in cases where I prefer the other phones (AD2k) they (T1) still sound quite good. So, in agreement with others, if you like the sound signature, I think you will find that they are still an enjoyable headphone combination with something that doesn't drive them perfectly. I'm waiting to figure out my strategy for trying the T1s with a more suitable amp and a/b ing, but I think it will need to get to a show in Seattle, as I'm not up for throwing that kind of money at an amp at the moment (given that I just ordered a pair of UM Miracles
)
I also need to get an 1/8 in to 1/4 in adapter so I can try the T1s with my D10 cobra for giggles as a comparison to the Parasound.
