[whitemonkey]

Hi to all the members of this forum, I'm pretty new to the headphones business and I have a question.

To my understanding my audio card, esi juli@ doesnt have an amplified output, so what I did was to connect the output of the juli@ sound card to my onboard HD realtek input jack, now the headphones are connected to the realtek's output jack, this way I managed to amplify the sound a bit, my question is, will the grado sr125 benefit from a dedicated headphones amp? will I notice any improvment in sound quality?

Does anyone have an experience with the grado sr125 with an amp and without?

Thanks in advance to those who will answer

 

[progo]

I'm afraid that configuration doesn't help much, if any. I might even suspect that the onboard audio chip first converts your input to digital and then converts it back to analog. Double bad sound.

A headphone amp will provide better sound! Or you could get a 2xRCA -> 3.5mm adapter and plug phones directly to the Juli@. I believe they will have decent volume, if it doesn't happen to be a very thirsty pair of cans.

 

[whitemonkey]

i've tried to connect the sr125 directly to the juli@ sound card, the volume is decent, but i was thinking perhaps an amp can make the sound fuller and have more dimension to it, what are your thoughts? any experience with the sr125 with or without an amp?

 

[JimSmiley]

Whitemonkey,

I've had my 125s going on about 3 years now. To my ears, they sound much better when properly amped. Without an amp or with a SS amp (Mr. X XP) I often found they were fatiguing--a common complaint. However, I recently purchased a Little Dot MKIII tube amp and the difference is night and day. At first I thought I might have built up a tolerence, but a quick switch of amps confirms that the tubes really do make a marked difference in my case. I can wear them as long as I want and listen at much higher volumes if I choose to.
I'm also using a copper interconnect these days. Not sure if that makes a huge difference, but some say the silverd add to the brightness. YMMV