Denon DA300 - USB with additional Amplifier to compensate low Output Impedance

[DaniRO]

As i dont really have a satisfying audio setup yet, im planning to get some high SQ headphones with a good yet affordable DAC.
 
So after some research i focused on the Sennheiser HD650 as headphones together with the dac DA300 from Denon.
 
However the HD650 aswell as any other headphone with compareable sound quality has really high impedance around 300Ω and the DA300's inbuilt amp doesnt seem to work quite well with high impedance as it got an output impedance of just 32Ω which should lead to distortion and low volume.
 
So my Question is if it is possible to put an extra amplifier between my headphones and the DAC and if it would work out, or if there is an DAC out with the same SQ and a better inbuilt amp in about the same price section.
 
( Heard in a lot of reviews the Denon can match with many DAC's above 1000€ mark)
 
Thank you already!


 

 

[billybob_jcv]

no, no, no - you are misunderstanding headphone and amplifier impedance. You do NOT want to match the output impedance with the headphone impedance. You want the amp output impedance to be much lower than the headphone impedance - at least 8X lower.

An amp may not be suited for high impedance headphones because it simply does not have enough output power to push to the high impedance headphones. Amp power typically goes down as the impedance it faces goes up. For example, for the Schiit Magni:

Maximum Power, 16 ohms: 1.8W RMS per channel
Maximum Power, 32 ohms: 1.2W RMS per channel

Maximum Power, 50 ohms: 1.0W RMS per channel

Maximum Power, 300 ohms: 260mW RMS per channel

Maximum Power, 600 ohms: 130mW RMS per channel


The Magni is actually exceptional for an amp at this price. Many amps at this price will simply choke above ~150 Ohms.