[FinnishSpartan]

Hi,

I have a Lehmann Rhinelander and a Lehmann BCL amp, I've been using the other one at my bedside. But however after getting another BCL I have my rhinelander left over.
 
Just wondering if I could hook up my rhinelander to my BCL so that the signal passes through it and amps it before sending it to the BCL. Or would this just damage my BCL?
 
I'm quite a novice when it comes to this type of technical stuff. I really don't understand much. All I understand about this type of equipment is that I can make music sound better, apart from that I really have no idea what is going on.
 
I also have a Asus Xonar Essence STX (soundcard with an amp) I'm using the unamped ports on the soundcard hooked up to my amp at the moment. I was wondering if I could make a sequence like this:

Xonar (amped signal) -> Rhinelander (more amping) -> Black Cube Linear (Final Amping) -> Sennheiser HD800
Would this damage any of my hardware if done?
 
Thanks for your advice,
- Finnish Spartan

 

[mikeaj]

You can do that if you want, but there's not really any point to doing that.  By passing through more amps you're just increasing the background noise and slightly reducing the fidelity.  The purpose of these amps is to amplify the signal up (or down) to a level that's reasonably loud for a particular headphones, and then to drive those headphones.  You're mostly just interested in the performance of the device powering the headphones directly—different amps behave a little differently running different headphones.  Often times these differences are much smaller than reported by the audiophile press or forum members, though they're real.
 
The input and output of all these amps are electric voltages that change over time: one voltage for the left channel and one for the right channel.  The larger they are, the louder the headphones will sound when connected across them.  For poorer headphone amps, connecting headphones across them will cause more distortions in the signals due to imperfections of the amplifier implementations (of course, nothing in the real world is perfectly ideal, just ranging from really close to not so close).
 
The Essence STX can run the HD 800 fine just by itself, by the way, but if you like turning a hardware volume control knob, I'd run the STX output (RCA line outs, not through the headphone jack) to one or the other of the amps.

 

[FinnishSpartan]

Quote:

You can do that if you want, but there's not really any point to doing that.  By passing through more amps you're just increasing the background noise and slightly reducing the fidelity.  The purpose of these amps is to amplify the signal up (or down) to a level that's reasonably loud for a particular headphones, and then to drive those headphones.  You're mostly just interested in the performance of the device powering the headphones directly—different amps behave a little differently running different headphones.  Often times these differences are much smaller than reported by the audiophile press or forum members, though they're real.
 
The input and output of all these amps are electric voltages that change over time: one voltage for the left channel and one for the right channel.  The larger they are, the louder the headphones will sound when connected across them.  For poorer headphone amps, connecting headphones across them will cause more distortions in the signals due to imperfections of the amplifier implementations (of course, nothing in the real world is perfectly ideal, just ranging from really close to not so close).
 
The Essence STX can run the HD 800 fine just by itself, by the way, but if you like turning a hardware volume control knob, I'd run the STX output (RCA line outs, not through the headphone jack) to one or the other of the amps.

Thanks for the tips! I will try out my amps combined and see what happens, I suspected that there might be more noise. However just wanted to know if you could do it and test it out (that you answered, thanks!), I can always just get rid of a part in the system after using it.
 
I've tried the Essence STX's own amp but it's pretty poor compared to a Black Cube Linear in terms of sound quality, I use the rca ports (that do not have amping) connected to my BCL to run my headphones. I did not want an external dac and the sound quality is pretty decent with this card as it is quite well shielded, is alot better then my previous Fatality sound card from creative.

Thanks for your help, will try out and see if I could get anything more out of these : )
 

 

[stv014]

Quote:

 
Thanks for the tips! I will try out my amps combined and see what happens, I suspected that there might be more noise. However just wanted to know if you could do it and test it out (that you answered, thanks!), I can always just get rid of a part in the system after using it.

 
The only reason why someone would want to do it is if the amplifiers do not have sufficient gain to reach their maximum output level without being chained. But with the STX outputting a 2 Vrms level that is standard for CD players, this is unlikely. Other than that, you may for some reason prefer the increased noise, distortion, and frequency response roll-off, or just have more peace of mind due to the assumption that the system now has "more power".
 
Quote:

 
I've tried the Essence STX's own amp but it's pretty poor compared to a Black Cube Linear in terms of sound quality

I wonder what the problems are exactly ? Not that it is impossible, there are no extensive measurements of the headphone output of the ST/STX available, and there is always the possibility of hardware or software issues.
 

 

[FinnishSpartan]

Quote:

I wonder what the problems are exactly ? Not that it is impossible, there are no extensive measurements of the headphone output of the ST/STX available, and there is always the possibility of hardware or software issues.
 

There are no problems with the amp on the Xonar, it will play the music just fine and as loud as I want it to.
The sound is just "flatter" and not as rich as I can achieve with a Black Cube Linear. If I remember correctly the BCL was also designed specifically for/with the Sennheiser HD800's and it really does show since it's the best sounding amp that I've had with the HD800's.