[Saint Henrik]

Hi guys.

I'm planning to purchase my first portable amp in near future. Some info below

Budget: -400$
IEMS: Heir Audio 4.ai s (neutral sound signature)
Source: Sony Xperia S and Sony Walkman Z
What I'm looking from the amp: Neutral sound ...that's all i know to say.

Thanks in advance

 

[billybob_jcv]

Buying an amp for IEMs can be kind of tricky. What is the impedance and sensitivity of those 'phones? I'm guessing they are fairly low impedance and high sensitivity, so you will want an amp with a low gain to prevent hiss and you also need a very low output impedance to prevent clipping and noise issues. An old favorite for IEMs are the Ray Samuels amps - the Tomahawk or the Shadow.
http://www.raysamuelsaudio.com/products/tomahawk
http://www.raysamuelsaudio.com/products/shadow

 

[Saint Henrik]

The impedance is around 25 and sensitivity at 500 is about 113. Hope that helps.

 

[billybob_jcv]

OK - that's about what I assumed - It would not surprise me if you really don't need an amp and other than volume, you may not see much difference.

 

[Saint Henrik]

OK - that's about what I assumed - It would not surprise me if you really don't need an amp and other than volume, you may not see much difference.

Yep. I'm also wondering the same even though some people say that amping improves the sound quite a lot for these iems but I dunno since the Walkman Z is quite powerful player already and it should be able to drive most iems in the market.

But anyway i'm gonna still consider buying that amp and those amps that you recommended looked very good quality on build and everything. I already went on and bought lod cable for Walkman.

I need to think about the price/benefit ratio tho as I think that cheap amp like Fiio e11 won't do much improvement so I would need to go with something more expensive if I'm right.