[pelson]

Hello!
 
Im using HD650 with an Xonar Essence ST which have a built-in headphone amp, but Im thinking the bass is underperforming and could be alot better.
Is the Pro-Ject Head Box II compatible with Essence ST? Will it work to have two headphone amps?
 
Anyway, Im quite green in this area, so maybe you know if I will gain something with this!
 
Thanks in advance!

 

[SM411]

Essence also got a line out without amp that should be used if your gona use an external amp.

 

[pelson]

I see. But that would render my headphoneoutput useless, and I would constantly have to shift between the speakers and headphones for the RCA L/R ports? 
 
So, what do you think, would this Head Box be produce more bass/better sound than the headphoneport on the Essence with its own amp?

 

[Head Injury]

It might produce more bass, depending on how it's designed, but by default it won't be better bass. In fact, the specs suggest it might be rolled off up to 1 dB by 20 Hz, which would make it worse. The Essence ST is plenty powerful enough for the HD650 (actually up to three times more powerful than the Head Box at 300 ohms), and with a flat frequency response, very low distortion into high impedance loads, and low enough output impedance to not matter. If you're not getting noise and interference from your computer, I don't see much reason to "upgrade". If you want more bass, use an equalizer.

 

[ShooTa]

well Headinjury has nailed it - you wont improve from the xonar
 
however if you were to use the  Pro-Ject Head Box II for external - hell for bedroom - comnbined with a non pc source then why not
also mostcomputers - even with special shielding like the st/stx has will stiull suffer a bit from em interferance - so you would be removing that from the equation.

 

[stv014]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShooTa /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
comnbined with a non pc source then why not
also mostcomputers - even with special shielding like the st/stx has will stiull suffer a bit from em interferance

Not necessarily in practice. I have pretty good SNR with a cheaper card than the STX (no shielding). There is only minor interference, much of it at frequencies that are not audible. The overall noise is still lower than the specs I have seen for cheaper external DACs (unless the manufacturers publish specs that are worse than reality, but that is very uncommon, unlike the opposite). Of course, other people may have noisier computers, but the shielding on the STX, combined with some obvious, common sense measures (choosing a slot on the motherboard that is not close to potential sources of interference, avoiding the front panel connectors, and muting unneeded analog - especially microphone - inputs) should keep the noise low enough.