cel4145
Headphoneus Supremus
In another forum I was told that the Atom Amp+ was running 1w at 32 Ohms and that I needed to look for something giving at least 2 to 2.5w at 16 Ohms
I got the impression the issue wasn’t so much volume (which is fine to me even at low gain) but that I wouldn’t be getting the full capacities re: soundstage, imaging, etc at the power the Atom is driving
This is all pretty new to me though so it’s hard to read judge (and I’ve never listened to higher end equipment before so I don’t have a baseline to judge - from my perspective the XS and Atom stack is better than anything I’ve heard before, but I don’t want to miss out if they could sound even better
There's a lot of snake oil in this hobby. And one of the myths is that more power is always better.
If a headphone can reach your preferred listening volume, such that dynamic peaks are not distorted, then additional power doesn't do anything. If you were not getting enough power such that dynamic peaks are distorted, then yes more power would help.
You can use this headphone power calculator to see how much you need for those headphones
https://www.headphonesty.com/headphone-power-calculator/
It absolutely does not need 2w at 16 ohms.
And I say this as someone who has owned seven different planar magnetics