[johnoshaughnessy]

Hi, new poster on this site .

Recently acquired some Dt770 pro 80 when my ath m50x headband broke. initially i was dissapointed by sound and was aware that an amp might resolve the issue. Before purchasing an amp i tried an amp from an old set of (not very good) bookshelf speakers my dad had passed onto me. They are called : Sanyo DC-UB01(BK) - Micro system - radio / CD / MP3 / USB audio player. It says they have an output power of 10 watts. can find no information on output ohms but I believe each speaker has 6ohm impedance on the label on the back, so maybe the output is 12 total?

Having tried them they improve the sound quality significantly. My questions are: will running my 80 ohm pair of headphones with them risk damaging either the headphones or the amp? Also if I noticed a big improvement with this amp would upgrading to something actually decent e.g. fiio e10k or a creative sound blaster improve the sound even more?
thanks in advance
J

 

[serman005]

Which output are you using on the Sanyo for your headphones? Does it have a headphone out?

 

[johnoshaughnessy]

yeah it has a headphone out on the back, which is what i am using

https://imgur.com/a/fVuNUR1

 

[buke9]

You will not most likely damage a headphone from a amp unless you crank it up where you would have hearing damage and then no big deal as you’re not going to be hearing as well as you did before. In all seriousness if you are listening to the headphones you will more than likely have hearing damage before you damage the headphones. I have a pretty powerful headphone amp that puts out 9 watts in balanced mode at 40 ohms and 2.5 watts single ended and have no problem hooking up any headphone that I have as it would be too loud to listen to if I put it on max volume but haven’t tried to destroy a headphone though as that would be kinda silly.

 

[johnoshaughnessy]

thanks for the reply, I'll go ahead and keep using it then regarding an improvement moving from this old piece of junk to a fiio e10k do you think there would be a noticeable difference?

 

[buke9]

Well can’t say which is better as I don’t have what you have or have heard them other than the 770’s not for sure which version and can’t remember the amp it has been awhile.

 

[serman005]

You might also look into a Magni 3. Plenty of power for those Beyers and clean. Pretty reasonably priced, IMO.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Recently acquired some Dt770 pro 80 when my ath m50x headband broke. initially i was dissapointed by sound and was aware that an amp might resolve the issue. Before purchasing an amp i tried an amp from an old set of (not very good) bookshelf speakers my dad had passed onto me. They are called : Sanyo DC-UB01(BK) - Micro system - radio / CD / MP3 / USB audio player. It says they have an output power of 10 watts. can find no information on output ohms but I believe each speaker has 6ohm impedance on the label on the back, so maybe the output is 12 total?

That is usually either:

1. 10watts total, so 5watts X 2 (per channel) at 6ohms. Output can be lower at 8ohms or higher, but above that it will extremely likely start to go down.

2. 10watts per channel into a 6ohm load per channel.

And no you can't have 12ohms total unless you wire both speakers in series into one channel.

Having tried them they improve the sound quality significantly. My questions are: will running my 80 ohm pair of headphones with them risk damaging either the headphones or the amp?

You can only damage the headphones using an amp if you let the amp clip. Unless the output level is so low you can barely hear anything while distortion is low enough that, on top of barely hearing anything to begin with, the sound doesn't drastically screw up before it clips hard (that you can't hear), chances are your ears will tell you "this sound sucks" and you pull back. If not "OWWWWOWWWWWOWWWW TURN IT DOWN!!! TOO LOUD!!!"

Damaging the amp with any transducer usually will be from extreme heat, like living in a hot climate and leaving a Class A amp on with no source running (or any speaker/headphone hooked up), or having current overload it thermally by using an impedance load too low for it, either with a nominal load at 1000hz or you run a signal which repeatedly forces a certain transducer to keep playing frequencies where the impedance drops far below what the amp is capable of constantly and loudly. Chances are though you'd hear the sound start screwing up on the latter long before you do enough of that to kill it.

Also if I noticed a big improvement with this amp would upgrading to something actually decent e.g. fiio e10k or a creative sound blaster improve the sound even more?
thanks in advance

Depends on how your current amp is, what the headphones need, and how loud you listen.

If the headphones require a lot more power and current, or has a low nominal impedance, and the amp has a separate and not good daughter board for the headphone driver as opposed to just some resistors that otherwise just make the output power from its speaker amp more usable for driving a headphone, then you'll get an improvement. Otherwise you're likely just getting lower distortion and noise which 1) you might not perceive, or 2) you might but not prefer it anyway (eg some people deliberately use high distortion tube amplifiers, and some other amps can have similar types of distortion, if sometimes depending on the load).

The DT770 is fairly easy enough to drive, but while I'd personally use the E10K or the K3 on it, I can't guarantee that you can perceive the improvements, not to mention I don't even know how badly your current amp does like some of my older speaker amps like my NAD 304.

 

[text]

Often, a receiver like that has different specs for how it acts with speakers and how it acts with the headphone jack, possible a completely different amp. If so and you can find those specs, it would give you a more concrete idea of what exactly has improved your headphones' performance. Then you can aim even higher and get more specific recommendations.