Not necessarily. That is true to an extent but you dont have to wait for the large public meets to listen to gear. As long as you've been to one meet, its not difficult to PM a head-fier from the meet that you met, to organize subsequent 2 person meets. Most people around here are nice enough to accomodate something like that. Most of the manufacturers also have 30-day money back guarantees and many of them will even send you demo units if you just ask.
Proved that despite its huge size the CD3000 can be shoved down one's throat.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ampgalore Almost everyone prefers tubes over solid state.
FWIW I do not believe that necesarily a tube amp sounds better or smoother, there are a lot of extremelly nice designs in Solid State today, sometimes a lot better in numbers, and better in sound also (earing physically them), this is traditional believe, but not 100% accurate......and not only in the headphone amps area....you could find good sound eitherway......I personally prefer solid state also for availabiblity reasons, tube hunting sucks....
I also prefer solid state over tubes for convenience reasons.
With solid state, can turn it on, and use it instantly. With tubes, you have to warm it up first. Solid state can last years and years. Tubes don't last nearly as long. And the tube hunting, I just don't want to spend more money on replacement tubes.
I've used a Marantz 1070, pimeta, xp-7 and ppa with diamond buffer. The last two were excellent with the hd650's. I sold both after comparing to the Eddie Current HD300. It is a versatile, as it is a pre-amp/headphone amp. I have been enjoying my time with my HD-650's with this amp. I had an opportunity to hear both the ppx3 and mpx3 at the Florida meet (not the best place to audition amps). I was contemplating an mpx3 purchase but after spending more time with the HD300 I decided to keep it. You may want to give Mikhail (Singlepower) and Craig (Eddie Current) to see if anyway to demo the amps.
One question, how is the HD300 as a pre-amp? I just purchased a new badass amp. I have the option of connecting the CD player directly to the amp, since it has variable out. Would a pre-amp help?
Hmm this is a tough one! I should've seen this one coming from our last mini-Ohio meeting
Well if I was in your shoes, I would have to first determine if I want to combine some of amps to buy a one amp that does it all for both HD-650 and CD3K or keep the Corda HA-1 MKII for CD3K and buy a dedicate amp for HD-650.
May I suggest following? If you decide to sell your Corda/Perreaux, you can buy yourself either Corda HA-2 or Prehead which will make you a very happy solid-state amp person (Gilmore V2-SE is another *****-kicking choice). This combined approach will let you use HA-2/Prehead for both CD3K and HD-650. A HA-2 can be had for around $500-550 used or Prehead for around $700-$750 used. Just a couple of hundreds extra if you sell your current amps, but it will eliminate any future ifs and maybes. Not to mention, becoming an envy of your fellow headfiers (including me). You know Prehead is faster, tighter, more detailed than your current favorite HA-1 MKII
.
Other option will be getting PPX3 which can be used for dedicated HD-650 listening and occasional CD3K listening. Although I don't see any problem for using PPX3 for a dedicated CD3K listening. If you decided to keep your HA-1 MKII, you will have best of both world--A good solid-state amp which let you listen both HD-650 and CD3K and a fine tube amp for HD-650 and CD3K. What do you think?
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