[Turner_Brown]

Hi, I'm new to your expensive world. I have recently upgraded my Grado-60's for a pair of 225's w/ flat pads. I primarily listen to music from my iriver ihp120 (mp3 player) and straight out of the soundcard.
Since I got the bigger cans I thought it might be time for an amp. Here are my questions:

I would like to have a really portable amp...something like a meta42 or cmoy. Preferrably something that runs on batteries and wall power. I would also like to stay under $200

1.)What amp would sound the best for my set-up?
2.)Will one of these amps do anything for my experience other than make it louder?

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

 

[saint.panda]

Hi,
maybe you should post this in the amplification forum.
Anyway, the Grado 225 is pretty highend already if you ask me. For a portable amp under 200$ you have tons of possibilities.
I'd recommend the Xin Supermini 7.0 (120$new, can be had for much less used) because of the batteries hold literally forever and it is really small. For sound quality you might want to wait for reviews on the new Xin Superdual.
The Meta42 / Pimeta (newer version of Meta42 based on the PPA) is a very good amp and qualitywise above the Supermini imo. Or a MINT is also a very good possiblity (small pimeta)
If you can solder, you could build yourself a clone or a MINT or a Pimeta yourself. the cha47 is also supposed to work pretty well with grados.
and then there's meier-audio's porta corda.

in any case, for 200$ you can almost any portable headphone amp there is (except the really big ones such as the PPA or Larocco Pocket Reference)

 

[Turner_Brown]

Quote:

Originally posted by saint.panda Hi, maybe you should post this in the amplification forum. Anyway, the Grado 225 is pretty highend already if you ask me. For a portable amp under 200$ you have tons of possibilities. I'd recommend the Xin Supermini 7.0 (120$new, can be had for much less used) because of the batteries hold literally forever and it is really small. For sound quality you might want to wait for reviews on the new Xin Superdual. The Meta42 / Pimeta (newer version of Meta42 based on the PPA) is a very good amp and qualitywise above the Supermini imo. Or a MINT is also a very good possiblity (small pimeta) If you can solder, you could build yourself a clone or a MINT or a Pimeta yourself. the cha47 is also supposed to work pretty well with grados. and then there's meier-audio's porta corda. in any case, for 200$ you can almost any portable headphone amp there is (except the really big ones such as the PPA or Larocco Pocket Reference)

Yeah...probably more of an amp topic but I cheated a little because this forum gets more traffic. I'll start looking into all the amps you mentioned. How about the 2nd question though?

 

[saint.panda]

all dedicated headphone amps will make your sound louder and above all increase the sound quality (that's what headphone amps are there for primarily).

Although by which margin the quality improves and whether one is better than the other is another question I can't answer.