[gritzcolin]

I picked a pair up for a steal used, about half the going rate. I realize i need a good amp and I decided to dust off my old C&C Box XO pocket amp. The battery is still strong, and I'll be damned if it doesn't do pretty much everything the HD800s needs. Now using this on my desktop feels weird and I am willing to spend money. Then as I was talking to a buddy of mine about said headphones, he mentioned he had an old Bottlehead Smack amp not being used and offered it for $100. Hell why not? It has an issue with a channel imbalance in two of the impedance settings but not in the other two. I can't get the full potential out of it. It does sound decent but doesn't have anywhere near the impact in the low end that the C&C Box XO has.

I will say the Bottle head really makes my Monolith Planars sing, but I don't want to use those near as much. I would king of like to find a decent dac/amp combo with 4 pin xlr balanced capability, although I don't mind separating the two units. When I read reviews about what works with the Senns opinions are all over the place, many of which include amps far out of my price range. I think a max of $600 is my goal, if anyone has experience with the C&C Box I'd like to find something similar sounding. I've only encountered one amp maker that had similar sound and that was a few Ray Samuels amps.

I wouldn't mind a little guidance.

 

[Reactcore]

Hunt down an used Questyle CMA400i
Those current mode amps are developed with the HD800