[ray830305]

Hi All,

I am always wondering how you know if an amp has too much power. I do hear the difference between using high gain and low gain settings on a DAP when I used the iem. The low gain seems to have more details while the high gain gives stronger punches of the sound IMO.

I understand that if an amp damage the drive, that is too much power for sure. However, can we use a very powerful amp to drive headphones at very low power?

For example, a 100w speaker amp to drive my HD800 at its lowest power output setting. Will that work?

 

[TheMiddleSky]

1. An 100W Amp will not put 100W in constant to your headphone, unless your headphone has impedance exactly like the peak power of your speaker amp (like 4 or 8 ohm) and you always maximise the volume.

2. Even if you run 8 Ohm headphone with your speaker amp, you still have potentiometer that will adjust the power you give to the headphone. The "safety" procedure is always start from Zero Volume, put your headphone on your head, and start gradually increasing the volume till sound comfortably good for you. High end headphone usually "stronger" than our eardrum, so we will feel pain due to loudness before the headphone got "overpowered"

3. Noise issue, like hissing on the background. This factor also possible because of bad design amplification. I can pair Grado SR60x (32 Ohm) with Cen.Grand Silver Fox (20W at 32Ohm) without any issue of noise, and they sound great together.