[MattTCG]

If you get serious about adding a vintage amp, you should check in with wje. He is the resident expert here on such things. I  believe that he has setup his he400 with speaker taps to the vintage amp. Brave man!!

 

[jeckyll]

Quote:

If you get serious about adding a vintage amp, you should check in with wje. He is the resident expert here on such things. I  believe that he has setup his he400 with speaker taps to the vintage amp. Brave man!!

Thanks, I've read literally 100's of pages in the vintage amp thread and am pretty comfortable with the SX line as my first choice
 
I don't think the 400's need the speaker taps  (especially on a vintage SA or SX ) and I personally wouldn't be comfortable with that setup.  Though it sounds like the HE-5's do benefit.

 

[wje]

Quote:

Thanks, I've read literally 100's of pages in the vintage amp thread and am pretty comfortable with the SX line as my first choice
 
I don't think the 400's need the speaker taps  (especially on a vintage SA or SX ) and I personally wouldn't be comfortable with that setup.  Though it sounds like the HE-5's do benefit.

 
While the HE-400s don't need the speaker taps, doing so is not just for the sake of the output power itself.  On most receivers or amplifiers, the headphone stage is pretty mediocre.  To get around this issue, the taps are used -- where one can utilize the audio spectrum that is being fed from the amps itself, and not some separate op-amp stage that handles the headphone jack.  Also, I'm not so keen on the vintage items at the moment.  Most are teetering at the point of needing a rebuild at the age of 30 or 35 years old.  Caps need to be replaced, among other components.  My last receiver, a vintage Sansui, worked great with my Grado headphones and the headphone jack.  However, as soon as I desire to use the taps, the HifiMAN headphones picked up a lot of noise coming from the amps.  I figured that the components were getting weak and were not up to the task to deliver solid sound - that would also be quiet during slower passages in music.  Instead, I prefer the new Yamaha stereo gear.  I have 3 of their pieces and love each one of them.  The taps do great with them.  However, one of my 2-channel receivers, the RX-797, has a very, very good headphone stage.
 
Please keep in mind that orthodynamic drivers are constructed to handle power.  They are quite a bit unlike regular, dynamic drivers, which would shrivel to pieces with too much power.  I was looking at the AKG K701 at one point, and I think they indicated 200mW was the max input for those headphones.

 

[jeckyll]

wje:  Interesting point on the vintage gear, especially given the 'love in' in the vintage thread 
 
I'm still looking to play with some of it down the road, simply because picking up an amp / receiver that will sound great for < $150 is very attractive 

 
Thanks for the tip on the 797, I'll add that to my 'watch list' for craigslist 

 

[wje]

Quote:

wje:  Interesting point on the vintage gear, especially given the 'love in' in the vintage thread 
 
I'm still looking to play with some of it down the road, simply because picking up an amp / receiver that will sound great for < $150 is very attractive 

 
Thanks for the tip on the 797, I'll add that to my 'watch list' for craigslist 

 
Believe me, I love vintage gear.  For it was the vintage gear that was "new" when I was growing up.  My audio love started 35+ years ago.  However, I think that places like eBay, etc. are and can be a horrible place to pick up used gear at the moment.  eBay sellers see that the same model sold a week earlier for $x, so they think that their piece is worth the same or more.  There are some gems out there for the picking, but one has to carefully tread.  In some cases, the vintage pieces are approaching prices that should only be paid if a piece were restored with new capacitors, etc.
 
However, when I purchased the Yamaha RX-797 from a guy locally on Craigslist, he had a nice 2-channel Marantz vintage piece.  The exterior was pristine and he indicated he had only paid $150 for it on Craigslist.  He recently had it serviced by an electronics shop that is local and their charge to go through the receiver and replace some of the components that were "on the edge" was about $200.  This did not include any capacitor replacements, from what I could tell - but, they indicated, the caps were still good.  The shop is actually a very reputable shop as a few of the technicians that work there, were former employees of Conrad Johnson.  I don't think one's resume could be much more impressive than that, to have had that experience working for such a company.

 

[Maverickmonk]

While the HE-400s don't need the speaker taps, doing so is not just for the sake of the output power itself.  On most receivers or amplifiers, the headphone stage is pretty mediocre.  To get around this issue, the taps are used -- where one can utilize the audio spectrum that is being fed from the amps itself, and not some separate op-amp stage that handles the headphone jack.  Also, I'm not so keen on the vintage items at the moment.  Most are teetering at the point of needing a rebuild at the age of 30 or 35 years old.  Caps need to be replaced, among other components.  My last receiver, a vintage Sansui, worked great with my Grado headphones and the headphone jack.

While this true of some "newer" vintage gear, a lot of the older stuff (pioneer sx series for example) the headphone jack is wired directly to the speaker amp, with a resistor network to bring down the power level as the only difference between the speaker tap and headphone jack

 

[wje]

Quote:

While this true of some "newer" vintage gear, a lot of the older stuff (pioneer sx series for example) the headphone jack is wired directly to the speaker amp, with a resistor network to bring down the power level as the only difference between the speaker tap and headphone jack

 
Correct.  However, on the same vintage receiver - my Sansui 881, my Grados performed really good using the headphone jack and it could clearly be seen how wires and resistors were connected to the speaker "outs" on the back of the receiver.  Even my HifiMAN headphones sounded quite good with the headphone jack itself.  It is when I built the taps and switched over to the balanced connection, I noticed all of the extra noise through the channels on my HifiMAN headphones.  I suspect the resistors on the headphone stage were enough to keep most of the "noise" quieted.  However, when all cards were laid on the table with the speaker taps, that's when things changed.  Ironically, the Sansui was fine when using speakers connected to the speaker channels.  I guess it all came down to how sensitive the HifiMANs were in relation to the power source that they were connected to.

 

[LugBug1]

Quote:

 
While the HE-400s don't need the speaker taps, doing so is not just for the sake of the output power itself.  On most receivers or amplifiers, the headphone stage is pretty mediocre.  To get around this issue, the taps are used -- where one can utilize the audio spectrum that is being fed from the amps itself, and not some separate op-amp stage that handles the headphone jack.  Also, I'm not so keen on the vintage items at the moment.  Most are teetering at the point of needing a rebuild at the age of 30 or 35 years old.  Caps need to be replaced, among other components.  My last receiver, a vintage Sansui, worked great with my Grado headphones and the headphone jack.  However, as soon as I desire to use the taps, the HifiMAN headphones picked up a lot of noise coming from the amps.  I figured that the components were getting weak and were not up to the task to deliver solid sound - that would also be quiet during slower passages in music.  Instead, I prefer the new Yamaha stereo gear.  I have 3 of their pieces and love each one of them.  The taps do great with them.  However, one of my 2-channel receivers, the RX-797, has a very, very good headphone stage.
 
Please keep in mind that orthodynamic drivers are constructed to handle power.  They are quite a bit unlike regular, dynamic drivers, which would shrivel to pieces with too much power.  I was looking at the AKG K701 at one point, and I think they indicated 200mW was the max input for those headphones.

 
best just to get a headphone amplifier, if you ask me.. ,opamps n' all. Some of my opamp driven amps are better than my non opamp amps. Technology eh!
 
Hifiman have put a lot of effort into designing an efficient planner hp to work with low efficiency. To then run them of speaker taps IMO seriously runs the risk of blowing the bu*ggers!  

 

[wje]

Quote:

 
best just to get a headphone amplifier, if you ask me.. ,opamps n' all. Some of my opamp driven amps are better than my non opamp amps. Technology eh!
 
Hifiman have put a lot of effort into designing an efficient planner hp to work with low efficiency. To then run them of speaker taps IMO seriously runs the risk of blowing the bu*ggers!  

 
Some of the headphone amplifiers put out 5 or 6 watts of power.  On some headphones, even that amount of power could be dangerous.  Speaker taps don't have to be built "in the raw" -- as one can utilize an appropriate resistor on the "+" connection to allow for better protection.  Additionally, I see all kinds of members going back and forth between $500, $350, $600 amplifiers ... buying, selling, buying - just to get the right amp and losing money on each deal.  The receivers and amplifiers that I'm referring to usually are about $100 to $150 (used) and have a lot of features.  Some controls over the tone, a balance control if needed, sleep timers, multiple inputs, etc.
 
I think good, stereo receivers are far overlooked.  Also, as I had mentioned, the Yamaha RX-797 has a great headphone output stage - so, if there's anyone who has a fear of running speaker taps, there is no need for the taps in this case, because the beautiful sound is already there.  I'm not into telling people that they should spend $300, $400 or $500 more than they have to, when great equipment can be had for less than the boutique headphone amplifiers.  And, I'm not Schiiting you either.

 

[jerg]

Quote:

 
Some of the headphone amplifiers put out 5 or 6 watts of power.  On some headphones, even that amount of power could be dangerous.  Speaker taps don't have to be built "in the raw" -- as one can utilize an appropriate resistor on the "+" connection to allow for better protection.  Additionally, I see all kinds of members going back and forth between $500, $350, $600 amplifiers ... buying, selling, buying - just to get the right amp and losing money on each deal.  The receivers and amplifiers that I'm referring to usually are about $100 to $150 (used) and have a lot of features.  Some controls over the tone, a balance control if needed, sleep timers, multiple inputs, etc.
 
I think good, stereo receivers are far overlooked.  Also, as I had mentioned, the Yamaha RX-797 has a great headphone output stage - so, if there's anyone who has a fear of running speaker taps, there is no need for the taps in this case, because the beautiful sound is already there.  I'm not into telling people that they should spend $300, $400 or $500 more than they have to, when great equipment can be had for less than the boutique headphone amplifiers.  And, I'm not Schiiting you either.

 
I think a big reason why a lot of people here stick with new headphone-specific amps is because they are compatible with PCs and laptops via USB...not sure if old receivers or speaker taps are also usable in that regard. I'm 100% ignorant in this area of equipment, by the way, haha, so pardon any misunderstandings or ignorance on what I assume or state.

 

[jeckyll]

Well you can just run  from computer -> DAC -> receiver (via RCA if need be) 

 

[wje]

Quote:

Well you can just run  from computer -> DAC -> receiver (via RCA if need be) 

 
Correct.  Or, Computer (Logitech Media Sever) --> Wireless Router --> Squeezebox Receiver / DAC --> RCA Output --> Receiver --> Headphones.
 
I have 4,000 s.f. in my home.  I can't just have one listening area and one small amp.  So, FLAC files are flying to 3 different Squeezebox devices at various times.

 

[IEMCrazy]

Quote:

 
I think a big reason why a lot of people here stick with new headphone-specific amps is because they are compatible with PCs and laptops via USB...not sure if old receivers or speaker taps are also usable in that regard. I'm 100% ignorant in this area of equipment, by the way, haha, so pardon any misunderstandings or ignorance on what I assume or state.

 
And because most of us are driving speakers on AVRs (gone are the stereophile days of my past ) and AVRs are sort of compromise units while good headphone amps are sleek little supercharged variants of big dedicated 2ch amps.  And my Lyr is about an eigth the footprint and weight of my big Denon 3312  

 

[LugBug1]

Quote:

 
Some of the headphone amplifiers put out 5 or 6 watts of power.  On some headphones, even that amount of power could be dangerous.  Speaker taps don't have to be built "in the raw" -- as one can utilize an appropriate resistor on the "+" connection to allow for better protection.  Additionally, I see all kinds of members going back and forth between $500, $350, $600 amplifiers ... buying, selling, buying - just to get the right amp and losing money on each deal.  The receivers and amplifiers that I'm referring to usually are about $100 to $150 (used) and have a lot of features.  Some controls over the tone, a balance control if needed, sleep timers, multiple inputs, etc.
 
I think good, stereo receivers are far overlooked.  Also, as I had mentioned, the Yamaha RX-797 has a great headphone output stage - so, if there's anyone who has a fear of running speaker taps, there is no need for the taps in this case, because the beautiful sound is already there.  I'm not into telling people that they should spend $300, $400 or $500 more than they have to, when great equipment can be had for less than the boutique headphone amplifiers.  And, I'm not Schiiting you either.

I agree, old receivers can sound amazing with certain phones, my dad has an old Denon and it sounds great with his hd600's. I would be looking to do the same if I had the HE 5le's or 6's Just meant with very efficient phones such as the HE400's. cheers

 

[wje]

Quote:

I agree, old receivers can sound amazing with certain phones, my dad has an old Denon and it sounds great with his hd600's. I would be looking to do the same if I had the HE 5le's or 6's Just meant with very efficient phones such as the HE400's. cheers

 
I understand completely.  Actually, I didn't look at it from a power demand standpoint.  Initially, it was done due to the questionable quality of output using the headphone stages of current receivers and amps, so that is why I built my first set of taps in the first place.   I also had a pair of HE-5LEs, too, which was another reason to build my first set of taps.