Originally Posted by royalcrown /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Gotta love the amount of analogies in this thread. It's been stated before, and it's great advice, so I'll reiterate at the risk of sounding awfully repetitive: if it sounds good, you're set. There's no need to worry about the "potential" you're missing out on, because at the end of the day the amp really only gives you that last 10% of the sound. Even at the ultra-high end, there's always some "potential" sound that you'll be missing, and thus it'll never end. Many people on this forum (not naming anyone in specific, just the general "mood" of the forum) will overstate the difference an amp can make. The difference between unamped with a quality source and amped with the same source is not the difference between a bad and good pair of headphones. The difference is much subtler and though it may be worth it depending on your preferences, it's hardly a "bang-for-your-buck" scenario.
Now, aside from the value aspect of an amp, to answer your question: why do amps make a difference? Say you have a 1 watt amp, driving loudspeakers with an 86db sensitivity (gah, I know, more analogies, but since phones and speakers are so similar, it's a bit more apt for comparison's sake). Assuming you get very close to the speakers, you may hear some pretty cool sound. However, two things happen at this point.
1) you're so close to the speakers that you can't discern a true soundstage from the speakers. Granted, this example isn't necessarily 1:1, but if you listen to music distortion-free (which rarely occurs, but given the assumption), unamped it would be so quiet that you'd have to strain your ears, thus making it harder to discern subtleties.
2) Say you want to step back from the speakers to get a soundstage (or in the case of headphones, crank the volume a bit to discern the quiet parts of a song). At this point, ALL of the musical information passing through the song much reach within the headroom given by the amplifier. In other words, at this raised volume, some parts of the song may sound fine, but as soon as a loud section comes in, it will peak at a level beyond 1 watt. Granted, the volume will still be there, but the wave will be so clipped that it will distort, which is less than optimal.
Now, the million dollar question, with an answer that's very personal for each person, is whether or not reducing/eliminating that distortion is worth plunking down x dollars for. That leads back to the first paragraph again, which leads full-circle. When I first got my amp, I was hoping for a truly night-and-day difference. Little did I know how abused that term is. Going from an HD-280 to a Beyerdynamic DT880 had a MUCH larger difference than from unamped to amped. Over time, I came to appreciate the subtleties given by my amp, and I do not regret the purchase. That being said, it is what it is - a subtlety.
Yikes, I just realized I wrote a hell of a long post - sorry if it comes off as rambling.
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