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Protege, I don't know if you knew the post you replied to was from 2007. If so, that's cool.
I saw it AFTER I hit "Submit," I thought I might as well leave the info there for future reference considering people just revive threads now than create new ones. My bad, the thread was so short I thought it was an ongoing one and missed your question!
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Can someone tell me please how to solve this problem: I want to make sure my headphones sound good and am thinking of buying a headphone amp, but I'm concerned that I won't be able to adjust the bass and treble levels to account for differences between different music CDs. How do you solve this? My receiver "output" that would go into the headphone amp. is just a straight signal, and adjusting the receiver bass, treble, volume won't affect the line out dynamics.
You mean it's a tape loop from the input (basically just to add another amp) ? Most headphone gear nowadays were oriented for computers (or even tablets and mobile phones) and hence, EQ is expected to be applied at the digital level; or in the case of 2ch purists, none at all. Some headphone amps do have a bass boost function, so that's at least one part of the problem out of the way.
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Is base and treble through a headphone amp a concern?
It really depends on the listener's preferences and expectations. Do you really like bass? That might mean you'll need it. Are all your music recorded well enough? If you have some where the bass is missing - like heavily-compressed formats (64kbps mp3 or wma, etc) - or otherwise weak in the original recording, then your system will have to compensate.
And yet one can manage expectations. One can be one sort of basshead - that is, in terms of speakers, enjoys some of the tactile sensations of bass notes. Most people who do tend to be the ones who blast Lil Jon in their cars attempting to blow their windows off and feeling the bass crawling on their skin, but there are those who just enjoy the feeling of standing front-row at a Deftones or STP concert and feel the kick drum notes on your chest. Either way, if one can get around the more realistic presentation of music (at least in reproducing a live performance) and not in any way "feel" the bass aside from what may resonate on the cheeks, and focus more on what the ears can hear that the headphones can play, it shouldn't be a problem.
Although of course that presumes the entire system's response does not make the bass any weaker, but personally this might even be more prevalant with speaker systems given many speakers at 1m to 1.5m away don't reach down far enough. Many standmounts with a single 5" driver only get down to 45hz at best (and those are probably nearfields measured at 1/3 of the usual distance).
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Is the solution to get a headphone amp that has bass and treble controls?
Going back to what I posted above, it can really depend on a lot of things, however the cheapest way to have bass and treble controls just in case you need it is to use a computer of some sort as your source, then using a DAC, feed a signal into it but apply the EQ using a music player that has one. This is still easier than before there were USB DACs - I heard of some guy did before who needed an EQ to correct room modes, but didn't want any bulky, old, analog EQ his Dad might have used. What did he do? When he upgraded his car audio receiver, he mounted his old //////Alpine CDA-98xx (can't remember the exact model, it's one of those that have a panel that expands to show all the buttons on it) onto a wooden box and hooked it up to a 12v power supply so he can use its EQ,
and have a high-quality 16-bit DAC and 4v output. At the very least it not only gave him an EQ, it saved him money from buying a new CDP for his room - but admittedly we at the car audio group still laughed at the whole thing when we first heard about it. No idea if he went further and scrapped the passive crossover on his speakers in favor of the digital crossovers on the Alpine.
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Or maybe I should scrap my receiver and buy a stronger amplifier for my whole stereo system that might make the headphones sound better?
You mean a stronger speaker amp? It might not help with the speakers - some speaker amps don't use the speaker amp circuit to drive the headphones, and instead have some kind of simple amp circuit that works off the same potentiometer (my NAD has this; Marantz amps have had a dedicated headphone driver chip for the longest time until now, same one used on the Fiio E9 I think). Basically, the power sent to the speakers won't affect the headphone driving capabilities, and depending on what the design is, it could be worse.
Instead of outright power though better to focus on
clean power. 100w on speakers, or 1w on headphones, won't be good enough if you have the distortion at, say, 1% already, also the possibility that either one at reasonable sensitivity levels may already be too loud at that point anyway. Current or voltage (depending on design) instead of pure, brutal wattage with distortion are more important, and it depends which one your headphone needs more, but a good headphone (or speaker for that matter) driven well will sound musical. One thing about headphone amps though - since it doesn't need a lot of outright power and hence cooling, it's easier to implement a pure Class A design, and a lot of headphone amps out there have that (or a lot more Class A bias) at a form factor smaller than preamps. A Pass Labs 10wpc Class A power amp needs two people to carry it because of the heatsink on the chassis, for example. (More on this below)
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However, not having had a head. amp before, I'm concerned that the bass and treble won't be where I want them, and the headphone amp I'm looking at buying (Topping TP21 Class T Amp IC Tripath) doesn't seem to have treble/bass adjusts. PS...I'm planning to buy Sennheiser HD 600.
The Topping isn't actually a dedicated headphone amp design - it's an integrated speaker amp. Unless you're broke and the speakers are your primary listening devices by a wide margin, and given you already have something to drive the speakers with anyway, get a dedicated headphone amp. I can think of one way to get around this problem, but not for all solutions/sources: get a DAC-HPamp with USB input and analog inputs.Or better, SPDIF inputs if your source (I assume it's a disk player) has another SPDIF output that is not connected to the receiver, or if the receiver has an SPDIF pass-through output. Chances are you still won't be using the receiver's EQ with it, but as the SPDIF allows for a cleaner signal transmission into it, you'll also have the USB for connecting a computer to it where software digital EQ is more accessible.
As for the HD600, my persoal take on it is I never needed EQ when the pads are brand new and I'm using the one DAC-HPamp (and others like it) I finally settled down with - the Meier Cantate.2 (went through the LD MkII and Ibasso PB-1 before this, and a Marantz CDP with a good headphone amp whose transport broke down). It's surprisingly close to the HD800's spectrum balance on fresh pads, however, more wear on the pads means the measured "hump" in the response up into the lower midrange is more pronounced, plus some sharp spike somewhere in the treble, so just wearing out the pads might not work right for you. Seriously consider using a computer as an optional source, it really can simplify any adjustments you want to make on the signal.
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Or would a preamp going into that amplifier help? !
I'd avoid this, as well as using the receiver's headphone out to send a signal into the line-in of a headphone amp. Check my previous post on the problems of using a preamplified or headphone output signal as a line-in on what essentially is an integrated amplifier.