[usedmanatee]

Hi y'all.  I've been lurking around for a while reading threads.  Tired of my ancient and not very impressive EH2270's leaving black smudgy smears of decomposing material (rubber, adhesive, etc. ? ) on every surface they touch, I picked up a pair of ATHM50S .  Although I haven't done any burn-in, I can say that they immediately have a much nicer response than the old Senns.  I compared vs. HD380s , etc., but these won out for the day at least.
 
I will mainly be using them for tracking, and at-night mixing, so they should be good.  Would some of the Fiio stuff be sufficient for lower-end priced amp gear?  For the moment I'm amp'ing it out of my audio interfaces (MOTU ultralite mk1 and avid mbox 3 pro), but I'd like to get an inexpensive but serviceable amp, possibly amp/dac.  the E7/E9 combo looks nice.  Worth waiting for the E11 I saw the thread about?
 
I'm sure most of you would only do your burn-in using a dedicated HP amp, but in the absence of an amp is there any reason not to do some pink noise burn-in using one of my headphone channels?
 
Anyway.  Looking forward to enjoying a better sound and less filthy mess.  These won't be the only cans I will own, but for now they're the only ones I own and will use.  For price vs quality vs "oops i just destroyed these" fear, these are winners.

 

[MattDX]

I'm burning my new m50's using pink noise on my iPod unamped. As for a nice little amp I've just bought a pa2v2 for mine but it's not arrived yet.

 

[BotByte]

Quote:

I'm burning my new m50's using pink noise on my iPod unamped. As for a nice little amp I've just bought a pa2v2 for mine but it's not arrived yet.

You don't need an amp with the M50's. It's like buying a extra volume.
 
An Fiio E7+E9 is not needed with a M50
 
 
Do a burn in as leave your M50's in a drawer or wrapped in a blanket. Have the volume where you like to listen to without strain, and press Random all on your computer. Let them go for a couple nights that way.

 

[usedmanatee]

Thanks Bot.  Listening to them so far I'm fairly impressed with the headphone outs of what I have, and I put on some dubstep (not really fully my cup of tea, but was testing un-burned bass response) and the sound pressure was fairly punishing.  Not so loud coming out of my iphone, but driven by pro audio gear is probably closer to "headphone amp" territory.
 
Some (e.g., headphone.com and likely several hear) would still advocate the use of a separate amp when coming out of something like a phone.  I may pick up something in the future, but for now I'm already impressed with the (relative vs the old Senny's) clarity.  If I grab an amp it will be a bit forward looking toward some slightly higher-end open backs (possibly senn again).

 

[zammykoo]

Hm, I just bought a pair of M50 on bhphoto for portable use too. I'll be using it on my iPhone and I am building a cmoy for that, although I heard you don't need to amp the M50.

 

[usedmanatee]

zammykoo: The iPhone drives them reasonably well on its own, yes.  It isn't going to blow your head off at max volume, but it doesn't sound obviously underpowered either.  
 
Not able to speak to quality of the iPhone headphone out, versus using a line-out dock adapter and a separate amp, but I imagine that the tone of the signal would be fairly dependent on whatever does the initial amplification.  That's something I'd be interesting in testing if I knew anybody around here with some HP amps.

 

[nezzurazi]

Quote:

You don't need an amp with the M50's. It's like buying a extra volume.
 

Yes, it isn't necessary at all. My attempt to drive them provided only a minimal improvement in sound to my iPod Shuffle.