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You really should take those 3 days to read trough the D1 thread
In the FAQ thread different opamps are reviewed and I think there's also a how to in there, if you can't find it contact one of the D1 modders
The D1 has a great DAC and a very good Tube out, but the stock headphone out might be a bit bright, but the opamps will take care of that.
I'm not sure you will get sound if you remove the tube
If you don't like the D1 headphone out after the opamp switching, you can always get an A1 for xmas.
You can buy opamps online on ebay or from Digikey.com. I just get them at a local electronics store
Good luck!
I think I pulled two old-style college "all nighters" reading the "consolidated" (thank goodness!) D1 thread, but I suffered from information overload, and forgot there was a lot of granular detail about modding contained in it when I asked my questions about swapping op-amps and the vitality of the headphone output section. I can see from your own signature the most popular D1 replacement op-amps, and I've been to the DigiKey website, but eBay may be more familiar for me to navigate.
As for using the D1 headphone output with my new Sennheiser 650s, stock op-amp or LM4562, I guess I'll only be be doing that for about a week. Last night, after spending probably another eight-hour day on this site (the alternative way of stating that is "after spending eight hours listening to beautifully reproduced recorded music while reading an online publication that has guided me back to that long-lost passion of an earlier life"), I went ahead and ordered an A1 with the matched pair of Raytheon 6AK5 tubes from Ryan (I already feel like I know him personally from e-mail). So I'll be using the tube preamp output of the D1 into the A1 and not have to worry about the adequacy of its own headphone amp, but instead of wondering about removing its stock Chinese tube completely and leaving an empty socket, I'll be scouring eBay for Western Electric 396A tubes along with op-amps. Sheesh, what a hobby! If it weren't for the deep emotional satisfaction that listening to properly reproduced beautiful music brings to the human brain, this pursuit could be viewed as an expensive form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Even with my tiny Nuforce uDAC-2 HP's volume potentiometer maxed out, the 650s are "opening up," especially on what initially seemed to be a very constrained low end, compared to the ATH-M50S. Last night I was listening the Patricia Barber "Nightclub" album (it used to be Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, now it's Patricia Barber and Barb Jungr; I'm definitely getting old), and there is an extended upright string bass solo on the "Autumn Leaves" track that was stunning. It was perfectly mic-ed, and on the 650s, it was exactly how an acoustic string bass sounds at close range as each string is being plucked: attack, decay and reverb. And the 650s are severly underpowered right now, and just have a cumulative 10-15 hours on them.
My D1 has traversed the Pacific and is now in DHLs Cincinnati facility, so it will definitely be here for XMAS; maybe its brother A1 will be here by 2011. Now,
all (note to self: refer back to his post in the event of future temptations) that is left is to
someday get one of the custom Sennhesier cables Head-Fi-er "Lil Knight" sells on eBay. No way I could ever afford (or justify to myself, even if I could afford them) some of the ALO or 6Moons cables I've read about. I briefly held off on buying the A1, thinking I might try to wait and save up my pennies for a year or so and buy a balanced output amplifier and rewire the 650s with a Cardas or other balanced cable, but then I decided that was just permanently out of financial reach, even long-term, and that if I went ahead and bought the A1 now, I would get that notion out of my head immediately. Talk about rationalizations!
Anyway, thanks for the feedback (rhetorically, not electronically or acoustically).