[essex853]

I am a fairly new head-fier (although I've owned a pair of over ear headphones for as long as I can remember) and I'm probably better described as a budget audiophile.
 
I have the Sennheiser HD650 headphone and my source is a MacMini (WAV files in iTunes) feeding a Cambridge Audio Dacmagic,
I am completely satisfied with both of these but recently I have been playing with headphone amplification with surprising results...
 
I have Pro-ject Headbox ll and Schiit Asgard headphone amps, both drive my Senns well, the difference between them is subtle but as you'd expect, the Schiit has a bit more weight and authority to it.
 
I recently acquired an old Marantz PM6010 OSE intergrated amp (because I am addicted to buying old hi-fi kit from a well known auction site) for under £100 which sounds as good as any other amp I've had before with the possible exception of a Naim Nait 5i that was a bit better (and 5 times more expensive).
As it has a headphone output I naturally popped the HD650's in for a listen, incredible! I can honestly say I can't hear any real difference between it and the head amps.
 
A bit of research revealed a couple of user reviews that raved about this old Marantz intergrated having a 'proper' headphone stage, result!
It's built like a tank, looks brilliant, drives speakers, has plenty of inputs, doesn't have tone controls (which I like) and cost less than the 'budget' Headbox ll.
 
I wondered if anyone else had any experience of this issue and the kit I've mentioned? all of my purchases over the years have been 'blind' based on magazine reviews and websites like this one and I have been both very satisfied and rather disappointed by different pieces of kit, in this instance I'm very happy and I'm now wondering if I need a dedicated head amp at all?...

 

[essex853]

I guess not!

 

[psiness]

i think some receivers are just good for that. retro ones, anyway. i don't know if all of them are that great for them. i don't have any hard to drive headphones to test it on. it would be nice info to know, though.

 

[essex853]

Thanks for the reply, I had started to wonder if I'd offended the entire head-fi community with my suggestion that their fancy headphone amps are no better than an old intergrated! 
 
I think it's an interesting issue, I don't have any real knowledge of what's inside the boxes I've bought over the years, and frankly I'm not that interested either, I simply know what I hear and the sound I like and if the box is a nice thing to look at it's a bonus.
 
I think value for money is also important, I have recently sold both my headphone amps (because they don't sound any better than the Marantz) and with the money left over, about £150, I can buy a load of new music, excellent.
 
I would be interested to hear from anyone else who uses a headphone output on an intergrated amp to good effect and their comparisons between it and a headphone amp.
 

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Even the integrated headphone drivers on Marantz CD Players are decent. I ran my HD600 off my CD60 and I didn't miss my Little Dot MkII that much. You'd have to go up much higher in specs to get very audible differences even after long periods of using just one; some cans, a lot of primarily speaker users get Marantz CDPlayers to use with Grados at night. Others I've tried that were as good were Sony ES players, and I also had an old flagship Onkyo CDPlayer before (late 1980s) and the headphone out was dismally boring and the guy who bought it from me said it was audibly worse than his CMOY on an HD650 (I told him to expect that), but I've read good things about the current products. My old NAD304 integrated amp was also decent with some cans but horribly boring with AKGs.
 
That said there might be a few sucky products from these brands, but in general you should be fine, most especially if you'll primarily use speakers and a combo of two NuForce devices is about 5x or more than the price of one vintage integrated (that you might already have lying around.) However, if you plan on using just headphones, the annoying part about these amps won't be the performance (since you get them cheap, or free from your storage) but the size, but ultimately that depends on your desk.
 
 
 
 

 

[essex853]

And size of the thing is another issue for me as you mention, personally I much prefer a full width 430-440mm amplifier visually, It's quite frustrating for me that most headphone amps and DAC's are 'half width' or something else other than 'full width' because my whole AV rig is built into an antique sideboard!
I realise that there is no point making something bigger than it needs to be for cost reasons but it does bug me that my Dacmagic doesn't match anything else on the shelves and yet they supply it with a whacking great ugly external PSU! 
Why not charge an extra £100, make it full size so it matches everything else and put the damn power supply inside?
 
when I finally upgrade my DAC I will choose between Naim DAC, Bryston BDA-1 or if I can't stretch to these an Audiolab CD800 for this very reason, they are the only DAC's that I can find that are suitable and full width, weird.
Except for Cyrus stuff virtually everything else on the market is full width.
 
So, all that said, the Marantz being full width is great for me although I do realise that for those with limited desk space it would be way to big, it's a bit of a monster.
 
Good to know I'm not going mad and that someone else finds their Marantz a match for dedicated head amps!

 

[hodgjy]

Nonsense.  Many of us use receivers as headphone amps.  Many of them are very good.  I use my receiver from time to time, and growing up in my parent's house, I used my old man's Kenwood as a headphone amp all the time.  Very enjoyable experiences.
 
Many receivers just use resisters to lower the voltage from speaker power to headphone power.  The sonic characteristics aren't too adulterated.  Some receivers, particularly the cheap ones, might use an opamp, but I think most older receivers and the better new ones will be very effective at amping headphones.
 
Quote:

Thanks for the reply, I had started to wonder if I'd offended the entire head-fi community with my suggestion that their fancy headphone amps are no better than an old intergrated! 

 

 

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

And size of the thing is another issue for me as you mention, personally I much prefer a full width 430-440mm amplifier visually, It's quite frustrating for me that most headphone amps and DAC's are 'half width' or something else other than 'full width' because my whole AV rig is built into an antique sideboard!
I realise that there is no point making something bigger than it needs to be for cost reasons but it does bug me that my Dacmagic doesn't match anything else on the shelves and yet they supply it with a whacking great ugly external PSU! 
Why not charge an extra £100, make it full size so it matches everything else and put the damn power supply inside?
 

 
It's not that simple. They can't just charge an extra $150 or so because it won't just be the chassis size that will be affected. When the thing is larger the package is larger, and apply business economics for shipping - ie, you'll fit less in a crate, you fit less crates in a container van; or otherwise pay (much) more if they send each unit directly to consumers - it's essentially a cost domino. Same reason why, if you can live with the inherent compromise for the soundstage, in all other criteria for sound quality a headphone would be punching way up the price bracket for speakers. Just look at the business economcis involved in producing a standmount with 6" mid-bass and 1" tweeter - the labor for making the drivers, the cabinets which have to be made out of good wood, and assembling the whole thing, vs the smaller scale involved putting one headphone together and packing it; not to mention that the box of a JMLab 607 can hold about 12 SR325's and still probably weigh less. 
 
Also, do take into account what the primary headphone system market would do with their systems. Back then aside from a back up to a main system (by now it might be the back-up to a theater, not necessarily stereo system), or mount it somewhere that smaller size counts for a lot - like in the bedroom, and by now thanks to digital iPod docks and the return of midi-size CDPlayers you can get audiophile quality on your nightstand. And, of course, by now the most likely use of a headphone system is to build it around a computer, with or without a digital iDock. Which probably means the users might want to have space for a printer, modem, keyboard, mouse, maybe a joystick, someplace to set down the digital camera while uploading photos for editing...I could go on, but basically headphone gear more than ever has to be able to share the desk space. 
 
 
That said I do know what you mean about how annoying it looks. I sold a CDPlayer before because it irritated me that a champagne CD player doesn't look good next to or on top of a black amp, and later on passed up on getting a Marantz PM80 despite the great condition because it was champagne. And of course I even felt kind of annoyed when people would sell of their MF gear and the buyers don't have the rest to match, meaning they just won't have what I liked to call the "American battleship gun" look of an X-Can, X-PSU and X10D side by side. And yeah I even thought an oblong CD player looked problematic next to those. 

 

[essex853]

Surely $150 would cover the extra costs of transportation you mention? It can't cost that much more, how do they sell big cheap amps like the Marantz PM5004 for example for $200? 
Anyway, considering the Dacmagic costs £230 ($300?) and is considered by many to sound as good as a £1000 CD player, I personally would of paid the extra money for a full width version with a proper IEC power cable.
I was really looking forward to seeing the new Dacmagic+ but to my disappointment that too is half width. 
 
I take the point you make about space and I agree, most Dacmagics probably live on a desktop next to a computer rather than a hi-fi rack, hence the vertical mounting option.
 
To Hodgjy, is 'receiver' US for intergrated amplifier or do you mean like a multi channel TV amp?  either way, which do you use? 
 
 

 

[jc9394]

Check out this thread, http://www.head-fi.org/t/537704/calling-all-vintage-integrated-receiver-owners#post_7249813, you will be surprise how many of us using vintage receivers for headamp.

 

[psiness]

but are the receivers an adequate alternative to amping headphones or are you better off just buying a headphone amp to begin with? does it all just depend on the headphone? i'm not talking hard to drive like LCD-2 or HD800 or anything. just a regular mid-tier 'phone.

 

[hodgjy]

I say if you already have the receiver, use that.  If you don't, and don't want to buy a receiver, then buy a dedicated headphone amp.
 
Quote:

but are the receivers an adequate alternative to amping headphones or are you better off just buying a headphone amp to begin with? does it all just depend on the headphone? i'm not talking hard to drive like LCD-2 or HD800 or anything. just a regular mid-tier 'phone.

 

 

[jc9394]

Quote:

but are the receivers an adequate alternative to amping headphones or are you better off just buying a headphone amp to begin with? does it all just depend on the headphone? i'm not talking hard to drive like LCD-2 or HD800 or anything. just a regular mid-tier 'phone.

 
I was floored how well my 2265B drives the HD800, sure it is not as good as WA22 but for the fraction of the WA22 cost it is unbelievable.  It is the best bang for buck on headphone related purchase.
 

 

[Chris J]

the bad thing about using old receivers is that the headphone jacks usually have a very high output impedance, which can lead to more distortion due to poor damping factor in some low impedance phones and frequency response alterations due to the interaction between the phone impedance and the headphone jack impedance.
a low output impedance headphone amp will always be more versatile.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Quote:

Surely $150 would cover the extra costs of transportation you mention? It can't cost that much more, how do they sell big cheap amps like the Marantz PM5004 for example for $200? 
 
 

It might but not always - business economics like public policy/development can start off with the same basic theory but variables in practice can differ on a case to case basis. When bigger amps are at the same price point if not cheaper, it's because they probably had the production facilities already, plus the distribution network. Plus if Schiit Audio can go against the mas production orthodoxy (large quantities at low production costs, or low profit margin, to maximize net profit), Marantz and the other big names can have exceptions on their own, too, such as having the distribution network set-up already. Question is how much these amps figure in the corporation's profits, since consumer choices are driven by things other than price, and in fact these 'other things' may be what drives the marketing decision on how the product ladder is structured.