[virusvoodoo]

Hi,

I have a question for those who has both a "dedicate" headphone amplifier and a Home Theater receiver/amplifier with a headphone jack and of course a nice pair of headphones. Do you guys find there are any significant difference between a headphone amp or using the HT receiver as a headphone amp?

The reason I'm asking is that right now I do not have a headphone amp to use with my Sennheiser HD650 thus I am using them with my Denon AVR-1601 receiver/amplifier. I don't know whether or not a dedicated amp would be any better than my current setup.

So if you guys with both kinds of equipments, please run a blind test between the two types of amplifiers and let me know if you feel about the difference between the two.

-Thanks.

 

[micaela]

I had the same question when I started getting interested in headphones. It really depends on the receiver & the phones. Right now my RS hornet portable amp beats all of the receivers I have in my house. The receivers I have compared it to are an Onkyo - that drives my home theater system - that one has the weakest headphone out -- a vintage Kenwood separates system and a vintage pioneer quadrophonic receiver. Both the Hornet & my Millet Hybrid best all of these receivers. The pioneer has a very nice headphone out - but I prefer the dedicated headphone amps. I had a porta corda II headphone amp that did not beat the pioneer -- but my current amps do a better job than the receivers. Some of the vintage amps have very nice headphone outs - it just depends on the amp really. Do a search here & you will find some of the vintage models that different folks have found that work well with headphones.