I was hoping someone could weigh in here in satisfying my curiosity as to why someone would want a portable headphone amp and/or DAC for JMAE headphones. IMO, these phones are really not portable headphones, especially my XTC-C 2.5s that are rather large, heavy, and unwieldy. So why would someone want a portable amp when a desktop amp normally has a much bigger power supply, and therefore in my experience more competence in driving headphones? Is it cost considerations? Do people carry their phones to varying locations and need a portable amp? Is it physical size?
Signed,
Clueless
Some people like to have collections of things. Some people (me) like to have options. Some people (me) are looking for ease and joy over perfection. Portable amps are great, especially great dongles, because they can be a true hifi swiss army knife, great for IEMS and very good for full sized headphones.
I have an amazing non-portable set up in my office where I do most of my listening while I work or play video games or just sit and listen, but when I want to go into the living room to listen on the couch or any other location in the house I bring either the Questyle M15i or Cayin RU7 dongles, I connect it to my phone or iPad and it sounds wonderful. I don't have to go through the process of taking my system in my office apart, moving it to a different part of the house, putting it back together, taking it apart again when I'm done, taking it back to my office, and putting it all back.
I would poke a tad and ask you what you mean by "portable" amp. That can mean different things to different people. I love my dongles for ease and pleasure. I also have a JDS Labs Element IV. To me it's very portable. It's amazing. What do you mean by "portable amp and/or dac"? In my office I have both the Shiit Yggi OG and Geshelli Dayzee connected to the Burson Soloist 3XGT. That is a pain in the booty to move, so I don't. It lives in my office permenently.
In my opinion, the way to make this hobby as warm and welcoming as possible is to offer the idea to everyone here, especially new people possible just coming into the hobby popping in catching a great review of these headphones, the idea that they can have a great time with John's headphones no matter what they listen on, and I can say from experince that they can. Yes they scale incredibly well, my personal office system shows me that all the time. But what if we are actually selling ourselves, or personal listening pleasure, and the experince of new hifi enthusiests short by thinking that great headphones should only be listened to on high end systems. That is just not true. Of course pleasure and listening is subjective. No doubt. But in my opinion a truly great headphone can and should sound wonderful on most everything, no matter the size of the device, and can scale up infinately to last with the listener for hopefully as long as possible. I know I'm personally not willing to invest this much money on a headphone that works only on one type of setup.
I teach and when I want to bring my JM audio headphones to my office at school I am for sure not bringing my heavy gear with me. I know for a fact that when I bring my little dongles ot portable dac/amps to work it sounds amazing. That is actually the reason I invest this much money in John's headphones. Because they can do that incredibly well.
The Beyer DT880 600ohm is a great polar opposite and example for why I have portable amps for my JM headphoens. To me I only listen to the 880 on tube amps. I really don't like how I sounds on other amps. It isolates me to listening only on one type of device. Those go for about $175ish new. I'm okay with paying that much for those, because great pleasure for me with those are incaccessable unless I am at home in my office. Those are not a true swiss army knife headphones. John's headphones are. I will personally only invest JM Audio prices if I have faith that I can listen on anything and have a wonderful time.
, i think i must have gone through 5 full threads over the last two weeks, and multiple random partial threads, next step I guess
