driving a hd 580/600 possible?

[manhattanproj]

is it possible to make a laptop or a desktop to drive a headphone such as the sennheiser hd 580 or hd 600 with an impedance of 300 ohm? what devices are needed if it's possible?

 

[Arainach]

Will they "drive" it? Yes. Will they drive it properly? Of course not. A fairly good headphone amp (I'd say Pimeta bare minimum) is needed to drive them to their fullest. Even then, I've yet to find a laptop with a good onboard sound card, so you'd probably want to look into USB Sound Cards or USB DACs.

 

[jagorev]

Bad idea. You'll get some sound, but it won't be very satisfying.

At minimum: I'd suggest getting a replacement sound card for your laptop - Turtle Beach Audio Advantage Micro for $28 does the job nicely, and then an inexpensive amp like the Go Vibe (many say it sounds even better with the additional AD8620 op-amp.) The Go-Vibe is probably my next purchase. I don't suggest the pa2v2 I'm using right now - it sounds bloated with the 600.

If you want to spend more, I'd suggest an Echo Indigo card (I had one for a year and was tremendously happy with it) and a PIMETA.

 

[manhattanproj]

jagorev

where do you connect your amp to? your computer?

can you connect an amp to an A/V receiver?

 

[Chri5peed]

The headphone-out or preferably line-out of your computer goes to the 'in' socket of the amp...you'll need an extra short connecting lead here.

Then your headphone plugs into the amps 'out' socket.

An amp will boot any signal, ensure its at the last point before the headphones...

 

[jagorev]

Quote:

Originally Posted by manhattanproj jagorev where do you connect your amp to? your computer? can you connect an amp to an A/V receiver?

Yes. I've plugged it into my computer's soundcard line-out (the Turtle Beach has a line-out) and my PCDP's line out. Both use mini jacks, so I use a $3 Belkin mini-to-mini cable form walmart (thinking of buying the $14 Cardas mini-to-mini sold by Headroom

). For an a/v receiver line-out, you just need a different cable - twin RCA (red/yellow) to mini plug Belkin cables are equally cheap.

 

[AdamWill]

The M-Audio Revolution 5.1 is a PCI (so desktop only) sound card which is known to have a fairly beefy headphone output - that would power them respectably. I believe the headphone outs on Creative cards are also reasonably well powered.

 

[MaloS]

i am raving about this thing too much now...
but echo indigos, io and dj have built in headphone amps, which do with the given headphones very well.
they are also noiseless, turn music off, put volume jack up to max, take headphone off, put it on...nothing, dead, clean.

 

[jagorev]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaloS i am raving about this thing too much now... but echo indigos, io and dj have built in headphone amps, which do with the given headphones very well. they are also noiseless, turn music off, put volume jack up to max, take headphone off, put it on...nothing, dead, clean.

Agreed with you that the Indigo is very clean and noiseless. However, when I tried plugging my HD 600 straight into the headphone jack of the Indigo, it didn't work very well. The sound was far too bright, harsh, and sibilant. There was absolutely no low end whatsoever. It was certainly loud enough, but just didn't sound very good. I think the built in amp does very well with easier to drive headphones, though, putting out a clean and punchy sound..

 

[BradJudy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jagorev Agreed with you that the Indigo is very clean and noiseless. However, when I tried plugging my HD 600 straight into the headphone jack of the Indigo, it didn't work very well. The sound was far too bright, harsh, and sibilant. There was absolutely no low end whatsoever. It was certainly loud enough, but just didn't sound very good. I think the built in amp does very well with easier to drive headphones, though, putting out a clean and punchy sound..

This is very different than my experience. My HD600s run directly off of my Indigo IO was on par (a tiny bit less, but only tiny) with running them off my PPA (8610s and DBs). No harshness or sibilance and the low end was definitely there. The low-end was better than on my PPA without the bass boost turned on.

 

[MaloS]

hd595 with 50 ohms is definetly easier to run, but i cannot see how u r having problems with bass, hd600 is bassier than hd595.
consider using an eq? from my experiments indigo is very sucseptible to the foobars equalizer, and that one is not even that great.
harshness of brights unnoticed...but thats hd595, they are more pleasant than hd600s for listening without powerful application.