Quote:
Originally Posted by Pumpkin72
The Senns became much brighter and clear, but also most of the bass response vanished. Without the PA2V2, the HD595 deliver pretty good bass (= not boomy or bloated imo), though it's also too dark (now I realize, I didn't notice this before).
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Sorry for the thread resurrection but I didn't catch this until now.
I've been listening to HD595 + PA2V2 combo for a couple of days now and definitely haven't noticed anything like this. My current combo of M-Audio Transit -> PA2V2 -> HD595 has a very satisfying, full sound with surprisingly hard bass slam. I don't understand what could be wrong with your setup.
The HD595 seems to need some pretty accurate impedance matching to sound good, and I don't agree with with the notion that HD595 wouldn't need amping. The low-impedance, current guzzling HD595 just doesn't seem to work well with low-current line outputs expecting high impedance load. Here are my experiences with the HD595 with and without amping on different sources:
SBPCI128 -> HD595: Dark, compressed, muddy
Marantz integrated amplifier -> HD595: Like SBPCI128, but somewhat better
M-Audio Transit -> HD595: Overly bright, harsh treble, no bass response to speak of
SBPCI128 -> PA2V2 -> HD595:
Much brighter and balanced sound with a lot more dynamics, improved bass definition and slam and considerably clearer highs. Everything is an order of magnitude better than without amping.
M-Audio Transit -> PA2V2 -> HD595: Like in the previous combo, but better high range definition. The overbrightness disappears completely.
So I guess the sonic performance depends strongly on the behaviour of the source/amp with different load impedance. They seem to vary a lot.