[jujulio]

Hi , first thing i am a noob so don't blame me! ^^
i have a a HD650, and i intend to use a computer ass source with many flac songs. I intend to use a USB dac probably KECES 151...but then what comes after?

i would mainly use my HD650....but maybe speakers too who knows? (i don't!!)

so what about a receiver? The thing is, headphone amps are specially designed for hps whereas receivers are mainly for speakers...am i wrong?

so what about SQ if i chose a receiver over a hp amp?

 

[furball]

What's your budget?

Truth be told, I think some of the headphone amps are WAY overpriced.

For $500, you can get a very decent receiver/integrated amp that can power speakers. Yet some headphone amps cost double, triple that amount. I just don't see how this price disparity or even parity can be justified.

I guess for headphone amps you pay for that boutique factor.

Take a look at some Harman Kardon stereo receivers, or the new Onkyo integrated digital amp (don't remember the model number), they are very favorably reviewed.

 

[scaz]

I am in the same boat. I do like Little dot's MK IV SE and MKV. I am leaning on getting the MKV as my first amp with my 650s. I also really like the WooAudio 6. RSA has some great amps too.

Everyone likes to hear different things and lot of sellers have satisfaction guarantees so you can send it back if you don't like it.

I can defiantly tell the lower end of my 650 is just not where it could be. I am sure that some more experience people will chime in soon.

 

[jujulio]

i was going for the little MKV but tubes are said to tighten up a lot the bass, unfortunately i have no idea of the price range for receivers, will look from now, thanks for your reply i will start with onkyo

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jujulio /img/forum/go_quote.gif i was going for the little MKV but tubes are said to tighten up a lot the bass, unfortunately i have no idea of the price range for receivers, will look from now, thanks for your reply i will start with onkyo

There are exceptions to every rule, but the rule here is the opposite. Solid state amps, as a rule, have better control over bass.

Regarding receivers, the headphone section of most modern receivers is an afterthought executed with cheap op amps (of course many dedicated headphone amps use inexpensive op amps too...). It would probably be a very high-end receiver that would have a headphone section equal to a really good headphone amp.

If you're willing to shop around, and perhaps have some service done, the vintage stuff is a completely different matter. Headphone sections in the 70s used the main amps of the component, knocked down to headphone levels by a resistor. Some of them sound great. I'm listening right now through a 70s vintage Harman Kardon and a pair of HD580s and it sounds terrific. Is it as good as a truly high-end headphone amp? I don't know. But it is very good.

Tim

 

[jujulio]

thanks, feels kinda wrong to think that nowadays receivers lack of what they used to be

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jujulio /img/forum/go_quote.gif thanks, feels kinda wrong to think that nowadays receivers lack of what they used to be

Well it's true and not true. There are plenty of modern receivers that have better specs than the stuff from the 70s, though most of the margins are outside of anything that matters much. There's no doubt that the build quality (and sheer weight!) of the classic 70s solid state stuff is beyond today's mid-level components. The mid fi - Kenwood, Pioneer, Harmon Kardon, Sony, Sansui, Yamaha, etc. amps and receivers from that era look and feel a lot more like the high end stuff of today. Sonically, though, I suspect the average HK, Yamaha, Onkyo, etc. at Best Buy will hang just fine with the old girls. Even if they've been lovingly refurbished. Except for the headphone sections...

Tim

 

[Uncle Erik]

Furball, when was the last time you priced out an amp? I'm working on a DIY tube one and have about $500 in parts and shipping right now. I'll probably go another $100-$200 in to tie up loose ends and for unforseen costs. It'll take me 30-40 hours to get the casing right and 10-15 to solder. 1-10 hours to debug, if needed. Assuming a tech costs a very modest $10 per hour and a minimum of work, that puts the pricetag well north of $1k, and without profit. Amps are not cheap. Even assuming quantity discounts on parts, you still have overhead, taxes, a website, tools, electricity, rent, and dozens of other costs. Most amps are pretty close to actual costs plus a modest profit. I invite you to build an amp - terrific learning experience, you get great gear, and you'll have a new perspective on the labor casing involves.

I do agree that some manufacturers are wildly overpriced. There is one whose prices are at least 50% higher than they should be and makes, in my opinion, a highly mediocre product with design elements I think are shoddy.

As for a receiver, the vintage ones can be very good. Also consider that most have radio and a phono stage built in. If either interest you, a receiver may be a good match for you.

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif Furball, when was the last time you priced out an amp? I'm working on a DIY tube one and have about $500 in parts and shipping right now. I'll probably go another $100-$200 in to tie up loose ends and for unforseen costs. It'll take me 30-40 hours to get the casing right and 10-15 to solder. 1-10 hours to debug, if needed. Assuming a tech costs a very modest $10 per hour and a minimum of work, that puts the pricetag well north of $1k, and without profit. Amps are not cheap. Even assuming quantity discounts on parts, you still have overhead, taxes, a website, tools, electricity, rent, and dozens of other costs. Most amps are pretty close to actual costs plus a modest profit. I invite you to build an amp - terrific learning experience, you get great gear, and you'll have a new perspective on the labor casing involves. I do agree that some manufacturers are wildly overpriced. There is one whose prices are at least 50% higher than they should be and makes, in my opinion, a highly mediocre product with design elements I think are shoddy. As for a receiver, the vintage ones can be very good. Also consider that most have radio and a phono stage built in. If either interest you, a receiver may be a good match for you.

No, I just don't think a boutique, high-end headphone amp and a modern, $500, mass-produced receiver are in the same league in terms of labor, and no offence Uncle Erik, but Gilmore's probably a bit faster than you. Modern receivers aren't in the same quality league either. Now, if a couple of the big manufacturers wanted to turn out good-quality, mass-produced headphone amps, they could probably deliver a heck of an amp for a couple of hundred bucks. But they won't mass produce them, because there's not a mass market for them, so we have our (relatively) small shop headphone amps, ready to go, and we have 70s hifi, which is a lot cheaper, but often requires some service. Actually, there's a pretty strong market out there for totally refurbished 70s components, and you can pick up a great vintage receiver, running quiet and up to specs for a couple of hundred bucks if you shop around. Check the headphone jack, though. I don't think they pay much attention to that.

By the way, Uncle Erik, it was a post of yours about vintage as headphone amps that got me to go repo my old HK integrated from my Dad. It is clean, quiet and powerful as it can be and I'm happy as a pig in poop. Thanks for the tip. Of course I owe Dad an amp now...

Tim

 

[furball]

In terms of the cost of parts, there is a big difference in price when you order a single piece and when you order 100,000 pieces. This is the advantage of economy of scale.

Plus, when you mass produce electronics, most of the production is automated. In addition, you can spread your research and development costs and equipment costs over hundreds of thousands of units. This significantly cuts down the overhead per unit.

This is the reason why I like to buy mass produced electronics. With mass produced electronics, you get your money's worth. With small volume boutique electronics, the price to quantity/quality ratio is bad, is not downright atrocious.


As to receivers.

harman/kardon

120 wpc x 2. If you look around, you can find this terrific receiver for under $300, brand new. True, the headphone section may not be as good as some of the boutique headphone amps. But for less than $300, you get receiver that can power speakers (120 watts is a lot of power), a decent radio, a decent preamp section, and a decent headphone out. What more can you ask for?

And I would challenge ANY boutique headphone amp manufacturer to tell me with a straight face that just in terms of the cost of parts, their headphone amp costs more than this Harman receiver.


Yamaha, Denon, Onkyo, Technics, etc., all make very decent stereo receivers and integrated amps around the $500 price range.

Supposedly the headphone outs on those stereo receivers/integrated amps are not on par with dedicated headphone amps. True. But you will be hard pressed to tell the difference during a casual listening session.



As to vintage stuff. All electronics have a finite life span. This is especially true with regard to the electrolytic capacitors, these need to be replaced every 10 years if not sooner. If you are proficient with a soldering iron and can read schematics, fine, you can find great deals in vintage stuff. But for most people, myself included, the headache of restoring/repairing the old stuff is just not worth it.


Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik /img/forum/go_quote.gif Furball, when was the last time you priced out an amp?

 

[jujulio]

well first i will look for the DAC, pretty much convinced about KECES 151...then i ll wait 3 more months for the hp amp or the receiver...i can convince my parents to invest a bit in a receiver since they'll use it, whereas i couldn't with a hp amp ^^. But then i would have to buy decent speakers too...some receivers just look great and i could set them easily in the living room, could replace the Bang and Olufsen staion we had

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

Originally Posted by furball /img/forum/go_quote.gif 120 wpc x 2. If you look around, you can find this terrific receiver for under $300, brand new. True, the headphone section may not be as good as some of the boutique headphone amps. But for less than $300, you get receiver that can power speakers (120 watts is a lot of power), a decent radio, a decent preamp section, and a decent headphone out. What more can you ask for?

Well, you could ask for better than decent, but personally, I think there are quite a few mass market brands out there turning out great-sounding equipment at reasonable costs. You mentioned a few by name.

Quote:

As to vintage stuff. All electronics have a finite life span. This is especially true with regard to the electrolytic capacitors, these need to be replaced every 10 years if not sooner. If you are proficient with a soldering iron and can read schematics, fine, you can find great deals in vintage stuff. But for most people, myself included, the headache of restoring/repairing the old stuff is just not worth it.

Well, sort of. You need to replace the caps that are leaking. When I sent my 30+ year-old HK to the shop recently, that was just a few. Now it sounds great. But I'll tell you what. The HP out of my cheapo digital Panasonic receiver sounds as good, maybe better in its own way. It's just in the wrong room.

Tim

 

[furball]

Can I ask how much did it cost you to restore that old HK receiver?

And you mentioned that there are some mass market labels churning out good gear. Which ones make your list?


Right now I have a Denon integrated amp. It drives both my speakers and my headphone. For my needs, it is more than sufficient. Just got the matching Denon tuner last week, so the setup is almost complete. All I need at this point is a Benchmark DAC1. Funds have been a bit tight lately. So hopefully I can buy one around Christmas. With the addition of the Benchmark, I can live comfortably with my setup for quite some time.

 

[tfarney]

Quote:

Can I ask how much did it cost you to restore that old HK receiver?

I think it was $55. That's to open it up, blow all the dust out, clean and coat all the pots and switches and replace two bad resistors. I dd find a guy who does this on the side, though, so that was probably a bargain.

Quote:

And you mentioned that there are some mass market labels churning out good gear. Which ones make your list?

Here's the naked truth that gets you looked at sideways in audiophile circles: I think most of it sounds good.

The build quality may not be great in all cases. But I think the sonic gap between consumer hifi and the entry level to mid level high-end (and I'm not sure about hi-level hi-end) has closed to something that is just not significant.

Speakers and phones excluded, of course, though there are some great bargains in speakers as well.

I'd bet quite a bit of money that in a double blind test with the similar headroom and the volume levels equalized, playing through the same speakers, most people, audiophiles included, couldn't consistently spot the difference between a $300 reciever and a $3000 preamp/amp combo, if (and this is a big if) the engineering objective of the high-end stuff was neutrality, not color (musicality, warmth, euphoria, whatever).

I think this is particularly true of the digital stuff that is coming out. I've got a digital Panasonic receiver that is cheap, cheap, cheap from a look/feel perspective, but the thing sounds great. The way the Panasonic is designed, even if you give it an analog source, the first thing it does is convert it back to digital (at 24/196) so that every step in the signal chain through the receiver, until you get to output, is digital. Think about that for a moment: All of the ridiculously high quality switches, capacitors resistors, wire, etc, etc, that high-end manufacturers have invested in their products in an effort to keep the signal as clean and transparent as possible, become a complete non-issue. And the other big issue -- power supply. It's a class D digital amp and it is so efficient that a heavy-duty power supply would be a waste of weight. That issue, too, has been rendered irrelevant by the design. So what you get is a bit-perfect signal, from source to just before the speaker terminals, with a ton of drive and headroom behind it.

I got a really good deal on mine at $169, shipped. These days it'd cost you a couple of hundred. Buy one. Get someone to build you a big, heavy aluminum case that lets the knob of the Panasonic stick through and impress the hell out of your friends.

Tim

 

[furball]

Onkyo came out with a switching integrated amp. From the reviews I have read, people seem to really like this Onkyo.

Right now the ICEpower modules from B&O are really popular. Many high end companies are using ICEpower modules in their switching amps. Rotel, Jeff Rowland are just a few of the labels that are getting a head start with this digital amp technology. But those are still quite expensive.


I was initially thinking about picking up a pair of traditional class A/B mono blocks when I have more funds. But if the prices on these switching amps come down significantly and the quality improves, I think I may just get myself into this whole switching amp thing.


This whole debate between the merits of switching amps and solid state (class A/B) amps reminds me of those raging debates between solid state amps and tube amps when solid state amps were first introduced.

Many die hard audiophiles to this day still swear by tube amps. I was born in the solid state era. So I never had any attachments to the tube era. Right now with this change to switching amps, I am also kind of reluctant to change. So now I can understand those old timers' attachment to tube gear. Very soon, a whole new generation will be born in the era of switching amps. They will have no attachment to traditional class A/B amps. What interesting times we live in.

But to be honest, I still cannot detach myself completely from the thought of owning a pair of class A/B mono blocks. There is just that emotional allure that defies rationality. Sort of makes me feel kind of old already.