HD600 without amp or with a portable amp - a dissenting opinion

[odigg]

This post is targeted towards the people who are asking, "Can I run the HD600's without an amp or with a portable amp."

A lot of posts in this forum state that an HD600 absolutely requires an amp. With all the comments about the various deficiencies that creep up with using these without a desktop amp, I started to think that listening to these HD600s straight out of my motherboard's on board audio would present me the equivalent of headphones using Jello for the drivers.

Among the dissenting opinions, tfarney's stood out the most. He seemed to be having a fairly enjoyable experience with the H580 out of his Mac Book Pro. I'm currently in the process of picking a new headphone so I decided to give the HD600s a try just to see how they would sound with my computer's on board audio and also a Total Bithead.

They sound great! Both sources can drive them to volumes louder than I care for and I think they produce music beautifully without any artifacts I could hear.

Now, some of you are going to jump in and say "volume doesn't equal sound quality." I'm not going to argue with you. Maybe they really are only at 50% of their potential. I'm fully aware that these headphones could be made much better if I invested in a desktop amp. What I am saying is that the headphones sound great to me, and I'm the average Joe listener who just wants to enjoy music. I don't want 3 pairs of headphones. I just want 1 that I can use to enjoy all my music. And I certainly enjoy the music coming out of these headphones without a desktop amp.

So if you are asking the question of "Will these headphones sound good out of my sound card?" the answer is yes. Can they be better? I don't know since I haven't tried it, but I assume with a good amp they could be.

And the best part is that if you do decide to upgrade your system in the future, you can buy an amp instead of buying another pair of headphones. If you don't want to upgrade - well - you still have a great sounding pair of headphones.

And the same goes towards the HD650, K701, DT-880 or whatever. If you buy one and love the way it sounds coming out of your motherboard, then you love it. That's that. You can make it better, but don't think you are getting short-changed just because somebody says so.

 

[DefectiveAudioComponent]

I compared my 580 which i basically the same headphone, with a few other headphones from the mac book pro. http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f4/sen...9/#post3760555

I found that it sounded rather veiled/distant from the mac book pro headphone out. You don't?

 

[Uncle Erik]

I think this would depend somewhat on the specs of your motherboard - they are not all created equal. And have you tried the HD-600 with tubes, or a desktop amp?

 

[alitomr]

The thing is some of those can DO sound like crap if not properly amped. My brand new HD650 are getting better (and they are, no placebo or other crap, because I made more than one person who are not audiophiles by any means and they prefered the hd555 over the hd650 listen to them when they got here, and now they think there are no comparison...) but they did sound like total crap from the headphone output of my laptop. I havent tried them there but I did try them out of ZVM output and the HD555 does sound better from there. If you put the headstage lyric in the middle then the HD555 sounds as if it was a $3 pair, but directly from the zvm the hd650 is just mediocre.

I ordered the HD650 because i was thinking along your lines. I was wrong and now i am considering getting a solid desktop amp only because i have seen how differently the HD650 behaves in different amps/receivers/sources...just makes me want to get them to their full potential although i dont know if i can afford it.

 

[Dobro]

I'm not surprised by your experience. My experience with the 580s is very similar with my PC's fairly generic sound card. They sound very good. Yes they improve with my GLite but they are still enjoyable with the sound card.

In fact when I bought my 580s I did a lot of research here and elsewhere and the general consensus at that time (a mere 6 months ago) was that they sounded good without an external amp but scaled well with amp upgrades and that has been my experience. I would not assume this applies to other HPs especially the 650s and K701s; very different beasts.

Anyway, glad you like your 600s and if they sound good straight from your sound card to you, then they do - its just that simple. If you want to step-up your game a bit down the road you will benefit from a good desk amp.

 

[odigg]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think this would depend somewhat on the specs of your motherboard - they are not all created equal. And have you tried the HD-600 with tubes, or a desktop amp?

I'm not contesting that the HD600 will sound better with a desktop amp. What I'm saying is that even without an amp they sound good. From what I heard on this forum I expected them to sound completely worthless. This is simply not the case. If you want to say "Compared to when you use a good amp they sound terrible unamped," I won't fight that.

As for them sounding distant, compared to what? Compared to the unamped Denon D2000s, yes, the voices sound a little bit distant. But it's nothing that I would have noticed if not for comparing them to the Denons. It's not like the last time I bought the cheapest tickets to a play and I could barely hear the words because of where the seats where.

 

[Duggeh]

Listen to them out of a good amp, then listen again out of your macbook or ipod, THEN understand what people are talking about when they describe the difference in performance.

Its a case of horses for courses, people talk about headphones needing amps as a matter of scale and a matter of comparison. the HD600 powered by your laptop may very well be easily the best sound you've ever heard, that doesn't mean that the HD595 or the Ergo 2 would not have sounded BETTER with that same level of amplification.

 

[BernardXue]

Get a portable amp
I don't think it is possible to play without amp

 

[tfarney]

TFarney the Dissenter here.

I think it depends on the soundcard. Some PCs have very noisy innards and soundcards with really weak output, and the 580/600 probably wouldn't do so well out of them. My iPod Nano barely drives them. A Macbook? I'd guess it does a pretty good job. In fact, I'm guessing that your Bithead doesn't even lower the noise floor noticeably, but just adds a bit of fat to the lower mids, yes? (I have an Airhead...)

Thing is, TFarney the Dissenter said all of that before he tried an amp with a a bit more speed and power behind his 580s. To do that, I confiscated my refurbed 70's Harman Kardon integrated from my poor ol' 90 year-old dad (I replaced it with a vintage Kenwood receiver, though). Now you can argue that the old HK isn't up to modern standards for noise and SQ (and you might be wrong, depending on what modern standards you're talking about), but you can't argue that it delivers plenty of girth. It is a discreet dual mono design with trannys the size of your fist, that uses the main 45-watt amps, knocked down through a resistor, that isn't putting up much resistance, to drive the headphone jack.

It is the very definition of "effortless" when driving the Senns.

You know what I get out of it compared to the Airhead? Tighter bass and faster treble. But it's really subtle. This business of 580s/600s sounding flat and lifeless without a powerful home amp is overstatement, pure and simple. I can't speak for the 650s, but anyone with a portable amp at least as powerful as an Airhead shouldn't hesitate to try a pair of HD600s. They will sound just like HD600s. If you don't like them, you won't like them with big iron either. If you do like them, they'll just improve with better amplification.

Tim

 

[Duggeh]

It is possible to play without a DEDICATED amp. I mean any device that you plug a headphone into to get sound has some kind of amplifier, be it the one built into an iPod or Laptop, or the one that's the size of a small Italian car with 15 tubes in it.

Whats important is the degree to which a certain level of amplification is needed in order to get a headphone to drive properly. In the case of the HD600, while, yes, they will function from an embedded amp or a portable amp, they will not reach anywhere near what they might do unless a heavier duty amp is used.

It is this difference in the level of performance which is the biggest factor being alluded to when people here talk of the HD600 "needing" a powerful amplifier.

This subject was covered with much passion and some very interesting and fulsome debate quite recently in a thread Boomana started in the amplification forum, its title escapes me at the minute.

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

If you want to say "Compared to when you use a good amp they sound terrible unamped," I won't fight that.

I will. It's complete nonsense. Through the HP jack of a strong, clean source or a decent quality portable amp, the HD580/600 is a really good pair of headphones. They absolutely do not sound terrible. Do they sound better through a better amp? Of course. They'll sound better playing a better recording too. We are masters of the obvious. But to say they sound terrible with portable sources and that it makes a huge difference to put an AC-powered amp behind them is hyperbole, plain and simple.

Tim

 

[gp_hebert]

Quote:

This business of 580s/600s sounding flat and lifeless without a powerful home amp is overstatement, pure and simple.

So, from what I understand, you tried your HD580 from a vintage receiver and the experience was not as good as what you expected. Therefore, you concluded that amplification isn't important with HD600. That's what I call an overstatement personally.

 

[triggerc]

I just listened to my HD600 through the headphone out on my Macbook Pro. It did OK volume-wise, but the bass was all over the place, and the high extension is poor. The sonic performance is really much better even on my minibox-e+, and even better on my VHP-2, a good powersupply should take i even further.

A look at the headroom impedance graph should tell you why HD600 needs to be amped.

 

[Covenant]

I personally think the HD600 can do just fine with very minimal power. I made a thread in the portable source section about using my HD600 direct out of the headphone output of my iRiver, and it actually sounding good

It does improve with amplification, but the differences from what i've heard arent night and day. A good clean source with 18mW per channel or higher output power i've found plenty sufficient to make them sing beautiful music.

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gp_hebert /img/forum/go_quote.gif So, from what I understand, you tried your HD580 from a vintage receiver and the experience was not as good as what you expected. Therefore, you concluded that amplification isn't important with HD600. That's what I call an overstatement personally.

Well, you could take it that way. Or you could take it that I've tried the 580s, which I've owned for a decade, with several amps and many sources, including an Apple laptop, a Headroom Airhead, and an amp (yes, it is a vintage integrated amplifier) with a ton of headroom, and specs, recently tested, that are equal to or above many modern tube headphone amps that are praised on these pages every day, and I found an incremental improvement at every step, but not the massive, dramatic lifting of wet blankets that would lead me to conclude, as is often stated around here, that 580/600s sound weak, thin and lifeless without a proper (whatever the heck that means) home amp.

And actually, if you don't want to go quite that far, you could conclude that after 30 years as a musician, occasional hifi hobbyist and pro audio user, I listen with my ears instead of my internet service and I knew before I listened to the 580s on my vintage integrated amp that the notion that they sounded weak, thin and lifeless through a portable amp was ridiculous.

Your choice.

Tim