[Squibbles]

I recently purchased the Chaintech AV-710 Card. But discovered that it is unable to fully drive the Grado SR-60. So I'd like to couple it with a headphone amp. With the recent group buy of $120 for a Porta Corda MKII, I've become real interested in purchasing one. Would this amp make a good match with the AV-710 and Grado SR60 for VBR MP3s/FLAC?

Or for the price <$130, is there a better amp for what I want? Portability is not required, as it'll only be used at home.
Thanks.

[EDIT]
Or would the Head Save Classic/Home be better?

 

[dougmwpsu]

I'll second this question... i have the av-710, grado sr-80's, and a pair of ety er-4's. Would I be better served by the headsave lineup or the corda group buy?

 

[Squibbles]

No one?

 

[Squibbles]

Let's give this one last try.

 

[guzzler]

Both are well respected manufacturers, and all users seem to like their own ones. It's really up to you what you choose. Personally, I would go for the Meier at that price, as it's a fine amp. The HeadSave amps are also popular, so just do a search on them. I don't know this for sure, but I think the new HeadSave amps are unbuffered, so given your SR-60 phones, the Meier is the one I'd choose

g

 

[dougmwpsu]

well i can at least share the information I was able to dig up through the search. It seems the porta coarda is an older amp that's seen alot of talk on these fourms. As far as the older string of amps were concerned, it generally beat out the likes of the supermini/mirco, old total airhead and cmoy's. It looks like quite a price drop from retail value, but based on recent for sale posts i've found people have had troubble selling off their used corda's for more than 100. the corda runs off a 9 volt battery for up to 100 hours, has a crossfeed circut and accepts a dc power supply of up to 28 volts which is said to improve the sound. I was unable to find how the corda compares to the new string amps like the superdual/macro and the headsave lineup. however, based on the huge number of people jumping on the group buy, maybe this really is the deal of the century, and I would be a fool to pass it up over one of norm's or xin's amps.

again, i'm just gleaning this information off the search function and since there are over 1000 threads that mention the porta corda, i've just barely scratched the surface of what's out there. if anyone has anything to add, it would really help me out in deciding if this is the right amp for me.