[headwhacker]

That's not my experience at all. On high gain the UHA-6 drives the HD800 very well, I usually have the volume knob around noon and around 11 am with the HE-500.

 
 

  around noon and around 11 am with the HE-500.
I agree. In fact, I'm comfortable with low gain even. Plenty of power, plenty of plankton. Volume knob around 10-11.
 
Oh, and re: the LCD-2.2 with the UHA-6S MKII: I think the combo is plenty good, at least for portable/casual listening. Even on low gain. And I'm not someone who simply hasn't heard the LCD-2.2 driven to their maxi and who doesn't know what they're capable of. My primary amp is the HiFiMAN EF-6. Its pairing with the LCD-2.2 is sublime. The best sound I've had from a rig. 


EDIT: On the LCD-2.2 pairing. I'm surprised by the amount of headroom the Leck provides. This isn't just a matter of the Leck getting the LCD-2.2 loud enough. The headphone is being driven well at listenable volumes. Very impressed. This amp exceeds many of the desktop units I've owned in SQ.

 
"Being driven well" is very personal and subjective. It may be true to you but not for others. To put it in numbers UHA-6S can only drive HD-800 at 112dB max (40mW @ 300Ohm). Yes, it's good enough for modern/compressed music. But if you listen to say a Jazz or classical music that may not be enough.
 
If your normal listening level is low (around 70dB average) then yes it is enough. But for some listening level is louder (around 85dB to 90dB average).
 
Same goes with LCD 2.2, it sounds good on UHS-6SMKII with AD797 when I tried it with modern rock recordings. But just runs out of juice when I play more challenging tracks.
 
You can plug in an HE-6 to this tiny amp and pretty sure a few will say they are satisfied with it.

 

[Schopenhauer]

That's not my experience at all. On high gain the UHA-6 drives the HD800 very well, I usually have the volume knob around noon and around 11 am with the HE-500.

 
[CONTENTEMBED=/t/602493/new-leckerton-uha-6s-mkii-portable-headphone-amplifier-announced-update-user-impressions-added-july-20th-2012/2205#post_11522825 layout=inline]around noon and around 11 am with the HE-500.[/CONTENTEMBED]
I agree. In fact, I'm comfortable with low gain even. Plenty of power, plenty of plankton. Volume knob around 10-11.

Oh, and re: the LCD-2.2 with the UHA-6S MKII: I think the combo is plenty good, at least for portable/casual listening. Even on low gain. And I'm not someone who simply hasn't heard the LCD-2.2 driven to their maxi and who doesn't know what they're capable of. My primary amp is the HiFiMAN EF-6. Its pairing with the LCD-2.2 is sublime. The best sound I've had from a rig. 



EDIT: On the LCD-2.2 pairing. I'm surprised by the amount of headroom the Leck provides. This isn't just a matter of the Leck getting the LCD-2.2 loud enough. The headphone is being driven well at listenable volumes. Very impressed. This amp exceeds many of the desktop units I've owned in SQ.

"Being driven well" is very personal and subjective. It may be true to you but not for others. To put it in numbers UHA-6S can only drive HD-800 at 112dB max (40mW @ 300Ohm). Yes, it's good enough for modern/compressed music. But if you listen to say a Jazz or classical music that imay not enough.

If your normal listening level is low (around 70dB average) then yes it is enough. But for some listening level is louder (around 85dB to 90dB average).

Same goes with LCD 2.2, it sounds good on UHS-6SMKII with AD797 when I tried it with modern rock recordings. But just runs out of juice when I play more challenging tracks.

You can plug in an HE-6 to this tiny amp and pretty sure a few will say they are satisfied with it.

Sure, why not? "Being driven well" is subjective. It's all subjective, I guess. I mean, I certainly take your claims to be subjective. I seriously doubt the Leck would adequately drive the HE-6. I've had the HE-6. I know what it demands. The "subjective" card is a conversation-stopper.

 

[FiJAAS]

I have a question, what would happen if I use my iPod Classic with a toslink cable with this amp and dac? Would the iPod dac get bypassed?

 

[SDBiotek]

I have a question, what would happen if I use my iPod Classic with a toslink cable with this amp and dac? Would the iPod dac get bypassed?

The iPod classic doesn't have a Toslink output. I'm not too knowledgeable about iPods, but you may be able to use a CCK to get digital out via USB, then use the USB input on the Leckerton. If you have a line-out dock (LOD) cable, you can use that to connect to the analog input on the Leckerton (using only the amp portion of the Leckerton).

 

[FiJAAS]

The iPod classic doesn't have a Toslink output. I'm not too knowledgeable about iPods, but you may be able to use a CCK to get digital out via USB, then use the USB input on the Leckerton. If you have a line-out dock (LOD) cable, you can use that to connect to the analog input on the Leckerton (using only the amp portion of the Leckerton).

Apple sells Toslink line out cables for the iPods. Just wanted to know if it would work.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H7048ZM/A/belkin-6-digital-toslink-optical-audio-cable-with-line-out-adapter

 

[FiJAAS]

Edit

Never mind, looks like that cable will not work with the iPod Classic.

 

[castleofargh]

Sure, why not? "Being driven well" is subjective. It's all subjective, I guess. I mean, I certainly take your claims to be subjective. I seriously doubt the Leck would adequately drive the HE-6. I've had the HE-6. I know what it demands. The "subjective" card is a conversation-stopper.

1/"subjective" is a conversation stopper
2/ his post is full of subjective stuff
QED
 
pretty sound reasoning apart from 2/ being totally false. the only subjective part here is how you read his post.
 
how is his explanation based on power into a load and looking at how much you need to go loud enough, a subjective thing? he's using electricity and the specs of the amp+headphones, that's as objective as it gets given the limited specs we have. I didn't check the numbers, but the fact remains that unless you use a low impedance headphone, how loud you want to go is likely to be the only limit.
 
and being well driven is also not subjective. it's badly misused in the forum as some audiophile way of saying "I like the sound" by people who have no idea what they are talking about. but to properly "drive" a driver, it need the optimal current and voltage to get enough magnetic force for the membrane to follow the analog signal as well as possible. as long as the current limit is reached because of the headphone and not because of the source, we're cool. and voltage peaks will decide how loud the sound will go. so talking about well driven at lower volume levels is not at all a subjective point.

 

[Schopenhauer]

 

Sure, why not? "Being driven well" is subjective. It's all subjective, I guess. I mean, I certainly take your claims to be subjective. I seriously doubt the Leck would adequately drive the HE-6. I've had the HE-6. I know what it demands. The "subjective" card is a conversation-stopper.

1/"subjective" is a conversation stopper
2/ his post is full of subjective stuff
QED
 
pretty sound reasoning apart from 2/ being totally false. the only subjective part here is how you read his post.
 
how is his explanation based on power into a load and looking at how much you need to go loud enough, a subjective thing? he's using electricity and the specs of the amp+headphones, that's as objective as it gets given the limited specs we have. I didn't check the numbers, but the fact remains that unless you use a low impedance headphone, how loud you want to go is likely to be the only limit.
 
and being well driven is also not subjective. it's badly misused in the forum as some audiophile way of saying "I like the sound" by people who have no idea what they are talking about. but to properly "drive" a driver, it need the optimal current and voltage to get enough magnetic force for the membrane to follow the analog signal as well as possible. as long as the current limit is reached because of the headphone and not because of the source, we're cool. and voltage peaks will decide how loud the sound will go. so talking about well driven at lower volume levels is not at all a subjective point.

Uh oh. Here we go. Someone is wrong on the internet. Notice I didn't say "'being well driven' is subjective". I was quoting the guy. And it was sarcasm on my part. If you'd bothered to read my original post, you would've seen that I was making an objective claim about the headphone, i.e. that it was being well driven by the Leck. Blocked!

 

[castleofargh]

Spoiler: off topic between kids with real problems.

  Uh oh. Here we go. Someone is wrong on the internet. Notice I didn't say "'being well driven' is subjective". I was quoting the guy. And it was sarcasm on my part. If you'd bothered to read my original post, you would've seen that I was making an objective claim about the headphone, i.e. that it was being well driven by the Leck. Blocked!

let's start by lol.
if it was really only just a misunderstanding from me, what are you getting angry about? maybe you could have just cleared things up leaving out the frustrated kid's tone.
 
but now I read your previous post again because hey I wonder if I was really wrong, and see that you just called "objective claim" your subjective opinion from listening to an amp you just only received. so I guess everything is clear...
I'll  just read the opposite of everything you write, and each time it makes no sense, pretend like it's sarcasm.
 
ps: the philosoraptor is nicer.

 

[headwhacker]

It's easy to say that an amp can drive a headphone just by listening to handful of highly compresses music. Which in UHA-6SMKII's case sure is good enough. I have no problem if that is all the kind of music you listen to and the 6S maybe enough for you but it will make people listening to high DR music frustrated and confused. Personally, I'd rather recommend an amp that has enough power to drive the headphone in question anything you throw at it. As a general guide 120dB is a good target taking headroom and what not taken into consideration.
 
I have a T1, which has similar efficiency and power draw relative to SPL as HD800. I sure can listen to it just fine with my UHA-6SMKII but only when the ambient noise is very low (bed room at night before bed time) and I'm in the mood to listen at very low volume. This is also while I'm reading (Meaning non critical listening). For critical listening, my go to amp is at least an O2 for my T1.

 

[AustinValentine]

  It's easy to say that an amp can drive a headphone just by listening to handful of highly compresses music. Which in UHA-6SMKII's case sure is good enough. I have no problem if that is all the kind of music you listen to and the 6S maybe enough for you but it will make people listening to high DR music frustrated and confused. Personally, I'd rather recommend an amp that has enough power to drive the headphone in question anything you throw at it. As a general guide 120dB is a good target taking headroom and what not taken into consideration.

 
Look, you're making a huge number of assumptions vis-a-vis the listening habits of the person you're debating. Assumptions that, on this forum, come very close to constituting personal attacks. What you're really saying is "You must only believe that the 6S.MKII can drive the HD800 adequate because you listen to **** recordings and I don't." That's certainly what's implied here. 
 
Moreover, in making those assumptions and implications, you're refusing to even discuss the matter in good faith. 

Originally Posted by headwhacker /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
"Being driven well" is very personal and subjective. 

 
You can't make a claim for the drivability of a particular headphone being a subjective quality and then attempt to insert a concrete metric for what you consider properly drivability (i.e. 120dB as a general target range) as objective fact. Drivability is either subjective or it requires a certain amount of specific headroom provided by the power output of the amp.
 
Now, if by "drivability is subjective" you mean "the perception of adequate drivability varies from listener-to-listener", then in your response you're simply outright dismissing another Head-Fi member's listening experience because you think you're they're just doing it wrong. Which, again, is acting in bad faith. 
 
What does acting in good faith in an internet forum look like? If you think that someone's opinion varies from yours because of testing conditions and differing criteria, it usually helps to ask the person questions about their listening experience and history such as: 
 
A. How long have you been in this hobby? 
B. What is the bitrate/sample rate of your collected media?
C. What equipment are you using as a point of reference?
D. What field knowledge and possible professional credentials (i.e. credibility-by-ethos) might you hold that allow you to speak to this matter with some authority? 
E. Do you have tonal or genre preferences that might allow you to make affordances for the hardware limitations of certain equipment? 
 
The number of available questions is limited only by your imagination and your desire to actually understand - and possibly get to the bottom of - the differences in listening perception between two or more people. 

 

[castleofargh]

@austine valentine. you're the one making negative assumptions here.
most modern music has really low dynamic and only you are linking low dynamic to bad music. I can't seem to read that in headwhacker's post. only that he's concerned for those who listen to more dynamic genres or simply listen loud.
 
 
 
now about your ABCD stuff, if we're talking about getting enough current and volts for the peaks of music to be played right into a given headphone, then none of your questions are relevant. how many credentials, or how many years someone spent in the hobby doesn't automatically make him right about his subjective uncontrolled listening. reality doesn't change because of who's saying it! at least for me it doesn't.
the consequences of what schopopo is saying are that people reading it will trust him and go get that amp for their LCD2.
the consequences of what headwhacker is saying are that people will be careful and maybe look into it and ask themselves if they listen loud or not. nothing wrong with being a little careful.
 
 is respect so important that it is now forbidden to suspect someone of being wrong? have we reached that point on headfi?
 
if we're really trying to talk in good faith here are the kind of questions that matter:
 
A/ what are the specs of the LCD2 he owns(because specs go all over the place for revisions of the LCD2)?
B/ if possible how loud does he listen to music? but we don't ask that because almost nobody knows how to check for that. that's why headwhacker looks for 120db peaks, as an absolute certainty for all listeners of all musics at any loudness.
C/ what tracks were used for the """test"""? so we can check for the headroom needed if we really mind.
D/ maybe what source was used if only the amp part was used for the UHA. (to try and find out if possible, the max voltage of the line out)
those stuff could make the subject to advance a little, not always easy and we might actually need Nick from leckerton for a few points, like the max output into the LCD2's load when using the OPA627A.
 
again I didn't check the numbers because the LCD2 changed so much along the years tht when I read LCD2, I just give up ^_^. and I personally use 110 or 115db instead of the 120db headwhacker recommends, so things might very well end up saying schopschop is right.
there was no need to go with strawman arguments about disrespect or schop playing the offended damsel. we're mostly adults and we know that not everybody will always be right.

 

[uchihaitachi]

112.8SPL is according to my calculations what the HD800 can be driven to by the Leckerton, so hopefully it should be fine!

 

[castleofargh]

  112.8SPL is according to my calculations what the HD800 can be driven to by the Leckerton, so hopefully it should be fine!

for me it would be very fine as I actually almost never reach 100db peaks when listening at home.

 

[AustinValentine]

  @austine valentine. you're the one making negative assumptions here. I can't seem to read that in headwhacker's post. only that he's concerned for those who listen to more dynamic genres or simply listen loud.

 
If you can't read that into Headwacker's post, even after the relevant parts were bolded, then I'm not sure what to say. We're at an interpretive impasse. 
 

 
nothing wrong with being a little careful.
 
 is respect so important that it is now forbidden to suspect someone of being wrong? have we reached that point on headfi?

 
I'd say that respect is pretty important for any meaningful discourse to take place, yes. There is nothing wrong with suspecting that someone is wrong. The problem here is the apriori assumption of incorrectness - and more than that, the assumption of causal factors without inquiry to determine. 
 
I could say this the other way: has discourse on this forum degraded on this forum to the point where respect no longer matters? 
 

 
there was no need to go with strawman arguments about disrespect or schop playing the offended damsel. we're mostly adults and we know that not everybody will always be right.

 
What a bunch of gendered ********. Why don't you just pull out the old standard "You must have sand in your ______" while you're at it?
 
See my prior statement on respect acting as a ground for any type of meaningful discourse. Where are you planning on getting from this type of insulting gender-bating? What answers are you looking for? What type of positive content do you expect this type of response to generate? I guess the next logical step is for me to say something like "[insert escalating gender-baiting comment here]" or "I QUESTION YOUR SEXUAL ORIENTATION" or "NO U" or some such. That's the only genre of response you'll get by writing something like this. 
 
Also, that's not a strawman argument. A strawman argument uses an inaccurate proxy for the argument of the other person. What I did is called a close reading. 1. I extracted specific examples from Headwacker's post; 2. I then explicated those examples. If you want to argue my reading by performing a re-interpretation of the same examples, or produce counter examples from his same comments, then go right ahead. All of the material is right there in front of you. 
 

 
if we're really trying to talk in good faith here are the kind of questions that matter:
 
A/ what are the specs of the LCD2 he owns(because specs go all over the place for revisions of the LCD2)?
B/ if possible how loud does he listen to music? but we don't ask that because almost nobody knows how to check for that. that's why headwhacker looks for 120db peaks, as an absolute certainty for all listeners of all musics at any loudness.
C/ what tracks were used for the """test"""? so we can check for the headroom needed if we really mind.
D/ maybe what source was used if only the amp part was used for the UHA. (to try and find out if possible, the max voltage of the line out)
those stuff could make the subject to advance a little, not always easy and we might actually need Nick from leckerton for a few points, like the max output into the LCD2's load when using the OPA627A.

 
These are actually good questions. As I said before, there are plenty of questions to ask - if one has the predilection to ask questions.