[didwlgh]

I've randomly decided to use a RCA -> SE adaptor to connect a headphone to a preamp, and to my sirprise, they sound great. I was wondering if this is okay, or will it cause the preamp or the headphones to break?

Right now headphone sound rgeat, and was wondering if I could eschew headphone amps.

 

[intoflatlines]

I think it's fine. I think.

 

[ericj]

Most preamps lack the output power to do it right, or they have a capacitor-coupled output with really tiny capacitors. This is because they're built with the presumption that the only things plugged into them will be loads of 10,000 ohms or greater.

If it works, it's not going to hurt anything.

Which preamp and headphones are we talking about?

 

[Kees]

I believe this will be ok as long as the headphones' impedance is not too low.
This should match the impedance of the preamp output more or less.
I did this with the balanced output of my preamp to a balanced HD650. That was ok, the preamp impedance was 150 Ohm, the HD650 300 OHm.
I believe it could have been a problem if the headphones were 40 ohm or less... (but that also depends on the design of the preamp).
I am not an EE, but that is what I learned when I did the balanced HD650 / preamp thing.

 

[MaloS]

If you are experimental enough, myself and another friend got some really interesting results using HD600/HD650 out of speaker amps.

 

[apostate]

I've run my Senn 600s directly out of my Proceed preamp with very nice results. Its specs are very similar to a lot of headamps so it seemed like a great solution.

Just to make sure there wouldn't be a problem I contacted Proceed (Harmon Kardon now *sigh*) and they provided the following:

"We do not recommend this, a high impedance headphone amplifier is
recommended."

That was all I could get out of them though after numerous requests so I'm unsure of what the potential downside is and don't run the 600s that way any more. I'm still tempted to get a balanced cable and try them off the Proceed that way just to test it but ultimately I'm more worried about causing a problem for the PAV/DSD than I am about making the Senns shine (it was a heck of a lot more expensive).

Ant