Last night I had the immense pleasure of finally connecting my HEDDphone One to speaker taps. I paired it with my new tube amp Nobsound 6P1, which I'm a bit embarrassed to say is an ultra cheap made in China brand, but actually has a good design and really shines with a couple mods and aftermarket tubes and of course a quality RCA input source. Being this amp is not specced to drive the HEDDphone properly from the headphone output at all, I went ahead and ordered a decent looking 6.35mm female adapter that uses a cable, so I could simply chop off the receiving side and reconfigure the wires to sit in the speaker taps on the back, with the unaltered receiving part of the adapter connected to my headphone cable without having to disassemble anything on that. I believe I used the 8 ohm speaker taps, and there is also a 4 ohm output. Not sure if I should also try that?
The sound went from resolving and very good but maybe slightly veiled and not quite three-dimensional with the ATH r70x with a traditional headphone connection to absolutely spellbinding on the speaker taps with the HEDDphone! It's like the floodgates of my deepest audio dreams popped up into an amazing three-dimensional reality, eye popping details in all directions, immediate dynamics, black background with humongous soundstage, details and bass galore, and as much clarity as you could ask for, all without being fatiguing! It's really something that has to be heard to believed! Anyone interested in going this route, do note there are several mods that are basically a must, such as my upgraded HEDDphone One cable (Rubi prototype from Arctand Labs website based in Singapore) that I mentioned about here earlier, aftermarket 6SN7 or compatible input tubes for the amp, and something that really makes a difference in my chain is the Audio GD DI-20 DDC which is fed by an external clock to further bring about the potential of my USB audio, and then converted to optical with a iFi SPDIF iPurifier and a really good multi-strand Toslink cable to a good DAC.