[bhazard]

  Woah, nice. My uncle just bought a nice 18" sub as well to accompany his 70k$ speakers, haven't heard the combination yet.

 
I've been a home theater and speaker building enthusiast for years. I have a fully DIY setup that is audio bliss, but it becomes useless on weeknights, unless i wanted to spend tens of thousands of dollars soundproofing.
 
Once I learned of Head-Fi, I caught the headphone/IEM bug now too. I never would have known how amazing the HE-500 is without this place. Now I'm testing all sorts of headphones and watching my wallet get slimmer. lol

 

[davidsh]

^Nice, few speaker enthusiasts seem to be able to enjoy headphones from my experience.

 

[pp312]

   It's funny... I think these are what I was hoping the Beyerdynamic DT880 Premium 600 Ohm were going to be (which I'm going to put up for sale soon).

 
It's funny, but the DT880 Pro were what I was hoping the HE-500 was going to be. I sold the HE-500 and am living happily ever after.

 

[uzi]

   
It's funny, but the DT880 Pro were what I was hoping the HE-500 was going to be. I sold the HE-500 and am living happily ever after.

 
Well, if anyone else is looking to "trade up" like pp312 here, I've got a pair of DT880s for you! 

 

[VTV]

^Nice, few speaker enthusiasts seem to be able to enjoy headphones from my experience.

 


+1

Or at least that is how it sounds it to me.

Only caveat is that the room is another ingredient as opposed to the headphone experience and once speaker has been calibrated for the room, a good pair of speakers are going to really sing. Only problem is that, as with all good speakers, louder sounds better and you have a tendency to go louder, something which one cannot do in absence of proper sound proofing.

 

[VTV]

 

Who makes them? My DIY achievements are limited to making coffee etc. 

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I am the same, so I just bought the materials and sought the help of a hobbyist friend who is handy with a soldering iron. Page 1 of the emotiva thread mentions that you can order cables like this from BTG-Audio and zynsonix.com:




http://www.head-fi.org/t/629352/he-500-lcd2-d5000-dt770-sr80-on-a-speaker-amp-emotiva-mini-x-a-100-project

 



Thanks, The cost of cables are forcing a rethink.

May be the money for the speaker taps could be put to a balanced cable setup for use with the balanced Amp/DAC.

One advantage of Emotiva or a similar AMP is that they double up as a speaker AMP if you need it.

 

[rexirius]

^  The simple cable in my post cost $25 in total:  $4 for 4 pcs. banana plugs, $3 for the Neutrik jack and $18 for the wires and soldering fee. 

 

[daerron]

I bought Audioquest banana plugs for reasonably cheap and just chopped off the 3.5mm jack. I'll buy a Viablue or Cardas 6.3mm headphone plug should I ever want to return it to stock form. But speaker taps makes a big difference to the HE-500s!

 

[Sonido]

 
Took the plunge and went for a speaker amp setup. Everything is more refined and smooth. The separation gets a big boost. Bass has more impact and is tighter, but it does not drown out anything else (the separation). There is a slight hum when no music is playing, but once the music starts playing, it's indiscernible. I really only hear it between tracks and even when the song is reaching the end and losing volume, I cannot hear the hum until the song completely finishes since it take a second for my ear to adjust from music to no music to noticing hum. Might only be a problem if listening to classical tracks.

 

[bhazard]

 
 
Took the plunge and went for a speaker amp setup. Everything is more refined and smooth. The separation gets a big boost. Bass has more impact and is tighter, but it does not drown out anything else (the separation). There is a slight hum when no music is playing, but once the music starts playing, it's indiscernible. I really only hear it between tracks and even when the song is reaching the end and losing volume, I cannot hear the hum until the song completely finishes since it take a second for my ear to adjust from music to no music to noticing hum. Might only be a problem if listening to classical tracks.

 
Which amp did you use?

 

[Sonido]

   
Which amp did you use?

Sophia Baby Amp

 

[Terja]

 

   
Which amp did you use?

Sophia Baby Amp

 
That's a tube amp. I am guessing you have resistors hooked up to the speaker outs to protect the transformer. The idea is to have the tube amp see a load as close to 8 ohms as possible. Doesn't have to be exact but close enough.

 

[Sonido]

Yeah using HE-Adapter that has 10 ohm resistor in parallel, so comes out to be 7.9167 ohms.

 

[elwappo99]

 
 

 
 

 

[Terja]

  Yeah using HE-Adapter that has 10 ohm resistor in parallel, so comes out to be 7.9167 ohms.

 
Cool! When I'm feeling "tubey" I sometimes run my HE-500 off the speaker taps of a Musical Paradise MP-301 MK2 with a resistor box I built attached.