earjam
Head-Fier
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2005
- Posts
- 62
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I have had the ea-l and the mcallister dynamic headphone amp in storage for over a year. The pots and switches on both amps could use a good cleaning. After using them at the meet most of the scratch went away. The ea-1 is a mixed bag. I think the design is probably very good. But the build quality is more in the prototype class and not what i would call production level. It has always had hum on the balanced inputs and i suspect a failed cap or something. I have not had time to work on it so i just dont use the balanced inputs. The rca inputs work fine but dont have as much gain as i would like to see.
The stax amp is srm 313 and it has a lot of gain. To my ears in a side by side with the ea1 the ea1 sounds best. the stax 313 has an very slight distortion in the higher registers but the sound is overall very good. The mcallister dynamic headphone amp has made hd 650 perform better than any other amp i have pluged them into. It seems to have a wider soundstage than any other headphone amp. The sa5000 are my favorite dynamic phones and they are easy to drive even from portables so the macallister makes less difference on these phones. I suspect the macallister would make the most difference on headphones with higher impedance. Maybe I will have my dynahi finished by the next meet so we can compare high end solid state class A with some of the tube amps.
The stax amp is srm 313 and it has a lot of gain. To my ears in a side by side with the ea1 the ea1 sounds best. the stax 313 has an very slight distortion in the higher registers but the sound is overall very good. The mcallister dynamic headphone amp has made hd 650 perform better than any other amp i have pluged them into. It seems to have a wider soundstage than any other headphone amp. The sa5000 are my favorite dynamic phones and they are easy to drive even from portables so the macallister makes less difference on these phones. I suspect the macallister would make the most difference on headphones with higher impedance. Maybe I will have my dynahi finished by the next meet so we can compare high end solid state class A with some of the tube amps.