[taylor]

I recently purchased AKG K340s. These headphones are very high impedance, 600 ohms is the number I have heard quoted. At least as hard to drive as HD600s.

I currently have a vintage Kenwood reciever. It powers my speakers and SR-60s fine. However, when I used it to drive the K340s, I really needed to crank it.
With my speakers, on the other hand, I can keep the volume very low. My speakers are something like 110db/1w/1m. I have successfully powered them out of headphone jacks.

Now, very easy to drive speakers, very hard to drive headphones. I have not done any formal testing, but I am pretty sure that a high powered headamp capable of driving K1000s would have enough juice for my speakers, assuming of course that it is stable with an 8 ohm load.

Anyone know of an amp that can do this? DIY is probably the best option, as I haven't seen anything mentioned on the boards that can do it.

I have been reading on the Pass Zen amps. They seem to be something that would work well. Does anyone know much about them? Would one be an acceptable amp for K340s?

 

[gordolindsay]

http://www.bottlehead.com/et/adobespc/S.E.X./SEX.htm

http://www.toddthevinyljunkie.com/pr...uct.php?id=257

Both of those amps can drive speakers that are very sensitive. The bottlehead is a DIY but is $369 and the Audio Valve is very nice but at $1200 you might want to look into DIY

Anyway, that'll get you started.

 

[taylor]

Do they make anything cheaper, say, $200?

At $200, it makes sense to integrate the speaker amp with the headphone amp for extra bang for the buck.

At $400, it makes sense to buy a decent integrated amp and a good headphone amp.

 

[gordolindsay]

http://www.customsoundco.com/Product...ID=3&Special=1

Regarded to have a very respectable headphone out. I know, I have one...

 

[taylor]

Ohhh, that's nice.

Does "respectable" mean the same thing as "drive 600 ohm cans with ease"?

 

[gordolindsay]

I'm not sure about 600 ohm, I used dt880 and senn 650, which are 250 and 300 respectively and it was no problem getting them loud enough. So I'm sure it'll be able to drive them to listening levels above what you can take and sound good doing so.

 

[taylor]

Excellent! The amps that could drive HD650s seemed to drive K340s fine as well. I guess I'll be picking it up when I get paid.

 

[gordolindsay]

Cool, you might want to check around for different prices. I picked mine up at my local dealer for $200 then a month later they had it on clearance for $150 so go figure.

Good Luck